


safety (draft)

by rabbitgirl



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, F/M, NaNoWriMo 2016, queer horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-04
Updated: 2016-11-30
Packaged: 2018-08-29 01:25:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 39
Words: 50,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8470309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabbitgirl/pseuds/rabbitgirl
Summary: a horror story about a girl named safety and the town she lives in.
my nanowrimo 2016 entry. unedited and unplanned; i'm uploading chapters as they get written, and i'm (sort of) making it up as i go. archive warnings are precautionary, and are subject to change.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> goals for this story:  
> \- finish nanowrimo for once (>=50k words by december 1st)  
> \- write something in first-person  
> \- write an original story i'm ready to release publicly
> 
> after nanowrimo, ill take time for cleanup and rewrites before releasing a finished version on itch.io or something, but i thought it'd be fun to release this disaster of a draft as i write it.

I know three things right now:

My name is Safety.

I am twenty years old.

_There is something in the water._

Chapel Bay is still today. The town _and_ the water - at my back, the streets are quiet, save for the muted chatter of tourists walking to and from their cars and buses; at my front, the water is as calm and still as if time has stopped. No whitecaps. No waves to speak of. No movement; no sign of things lurking above or below. Just the sparse twinkling of the low sun, scattering pale orange photons across the bay.

A bell rings in the distance. _Two P.M._ Kids will be leaving school, soon, spilling out of the not-crumbling but not-quite-state of the art building at the center of town and down through the streets to homes and haunts. The sun lingers just above the horizon, casting the back half of the town in purple shadow and silhouetting the tiny flecks of distant fishing boats - and the rare sailboat drifting a little too close to the town. Squads of gulls are already forming farther up the beach, near the haphazard maze of piers where the boats will stop and unload their organic cargo - fisherman and fish alike - by the next time the bell rings.

One of them skips off of the wooden planks and onto the beach, but the rest of them know better than to leave the pier.

I don't blink.

All of this is normal. Nothing about this is unusual. A couple behind me stops to take a picture of the gulls. They laugh about how domesticated the birds must be, to gather in the same spot, every day, like clockwork. A child - not a local - asks their father where the big metal buildings came from. His father laughs and says he'll tell them when they're older. (He doesn't know, but the child accepts his answer anyways.) They go running off down the coast (on rough, gravely sand; nothing like the soft white sand of the beaches down the coast), or so I think. I can't won't look away from the water.

The water is black.

The water is that normal shade of ocean-blue-green, but with the sun this low, the water is black and opaque. It shifts and stutters like a mirror that hasn't quite figured out what it wants to reflect. It defies anyone watching to try and see what's inside - come on, just _try_. There's no way for me to know what's below the surface. There's no way for me to know that there _is_ a Below - the water could be an inch deep. Could be miles. Maybe there's nothing in there at all.

I know that there's something in there.

I haven't seen it yet. I haven't heard it, or felt or smelled or tasted it. I don't have to.

I know it's there.

Watching me.

And until it shows its face, I'm going to watch it right back.

 

My phone goes off. It catches me off guard - I start at the sound, and it takes me a couple moments of blearily blinking at the sand before I realize where the tinny cluster of synthesized noises is coming from. It takes a few more moments on top of that before I remember which pocket the noises are ringing out of, and by the time I've managed to fish it out, my ringtone has managed to get through two verses and is ready for a chorus.

(I turn the alarm off before the rest of the beach has to listen to my obnoxious, bubblegum pop mess of a ringtone devolves into protracted death metal growls.)

_2:10 PM._ And then, right below the clock, a reminder: _food with c._

I hesitate for a moment - my eyes dart to the waves, dotting white all along the surface - and then I slip my phone back into my pocket and turn back towards town. The water can wait.

 

Town. Chapel Bay barely qualifies as a town, to be honest - hamlet feels like a better word, maybe, or village; capital-T Towns are places where things happen, places that people settle in, or grow up in before they leave out to explore the world, never to return (except for holidays, deaths, births, and weddings).

That's not Chapel Bay - Chapel Bay is about two thousand people crammed into barely a square mile of apartments and little Colonials at the part of the coast where people stop making fun of your accent so much; it's not so little that it's a pastoral, untainted patch of land where it feels like you could step back in time, but it's still the kind of place that people tend not to leave. Ever. Just about everyone in town can trace their lineage back to when the town was founded - or at least, when they think it was founded; the histories get a little fuzzy the farther you go back. It's centuries old, at least; it might've even been here since before this was it's own country. It's the kind of place where everybody knows everybody, where every brick and plank of wood is brimming with history and stories; where you're born, grow up, grow old, and die.

I fucking hate it here.

 

"I saw you out there," Corina says, mumbling around a mouth full of hamburger, "on my way over. You see anything cool today?"

"Fuck off."

She rolls her eyes and lets them land, briefly, on a gaggle of high-schoolers walking outside the window. Four or five of them. They're local kids (I can tell), and they're laughing - sharing that _look_ that says _someone's older brother is going to buy us beer and then we're going to get sooooo drunk_. (Godspeed.) I'm pretty sure it's Tuesday.

Corina swallows, and fixes me with that _lighten the fuck up_ look. "Jeez, Safe, will you just chill? I'm just pulling your leg."

I refuse to lighten the fuck up. Or chill. "It's not funny, Corina."

She sighs, and leans back against the booth. "No, you're right. Sorry." She lowers her voice so it's barely audible over the sound of the diner. "You know I believe you, right?"

Ugh. "Yeah, I know." She's right - out of the five or six people I'd really call my _friends_ , Corina's the only one who really trusts that there's Something in the bay. Everyone else tends to react with awkward, noncommittal half-laughter at best - oh boy, there's Safety being all _crazy_ again - or outright mocking at worst. (Jackasses.) "Sorry. I'm trying not to be a bitch about it."

She shakes her head. _Don't worry about it._ "Seriously, though, did you...?"

I make a point of stirring my coffee and staring out the window. "Right," she sighs. "Just, you know. Take it easy, okay?"

"I'm not crazy."

"I didn't say you were."

I don't really have a response to that. I start to say something, but before I can get a fully-fledged thought in place, it disappears, and I let the conversation just sit on the table, buried underneath the sound of silverware and other muffled conversations.

The Diner has a name, probably, but the sign outside is so faded and torn up that no one's really sure what it is anymore. It's the sort of establishment that puts its menus (sparse, simple, to the point) on printer paper and that is so thoroughly soaked with decades of spilled coffee that I don't actually have to order anything to get my daily caffeine fix. (Well, _I_ do, but most people don't need six or seven cups of coffee to get through the day.) Chapel Bay might not have a lot in the way of all that high-class chain restaurants - your McDonald's's and Taco Bells and Olive Gardens - but between The Diner, Harris's Pub on F Street, and the more "upscale" (whatever the hell that means) restaurant at the other end of town, we're pretty set when it comes to food.

Pretty much everyone just goes to The Diner, though.

I drag my fingernail across the plastic table covering. It catches in the ridges on the surface. "What about you?" I ask. "How's your day been?"

She shrugs. Brushes a hand through her hair (long, black, newly-straightened) and sweeps it over her shoulder. "Same old, same old. Woke up like three hours ago. Yelled at some bigots online." She makes a face - "Some dumbass deadnamed on my way over."

I screw up my face in the best approximation of hers I can muster. "Seriously? _Still?"_

"I know, right?" She takes a sip of her drink - just water for her, thanks - "You think that everyone would _know_ by now. Or - ah, I don't know, maybe he _did_ know and he was just being garbage. Whatever."

"Sorry."

She shrugs. "Whatever. Like I said, I've only really been awake long enough to eat and have a drink before I came down here."

I take a sip of my coffee. It tastes like shit. "You still coming out tonight?"

"Of course. I can handle a couple of shots beforehand. Are you?"

"Yeah, def." I haven't missed a night out in months.

Her phone vibrates across the table, rattling against unused silverware. "That's my cue," she mutters. "Sorry to run so soon. I _thought_ he was going to give me a little more time." She _looks_ at me, eyebrows raised, mouth thin. "Eric wants to take me down to the docks and find a job on the _boats._ "

It takes all of my willpower to convert a full-blown guffaw into a snort. "That's not very ladylike."

She stands up and smiles at me, sickly sweet. "I don't think you're really one to talk about gender stereotypes, Ma-"

_"Don't."_

She giggles, and makes a point of flicking me on the back of my head on her way out (a little harder than is necessary, probably). "Later, Safe. You've got the bill."

As the bell over the door heralds Corina's exit, I turn towards the counter, the little paper slip held aloft. "Hey, Judy - "

The elderly, heavyset woman sitting on a stool at the end of the counter grunts back a response without looking up from her newspaper in a voice marred by cigarettes and a lifetime of too-hot coffee. "On the house. Tell your mom I said hi."

I nod back (not that she can see it). Always nice to hear that. Being a jobless do-nothing is a lot easier when half the people in town are willing to just _give_ me shit. I settle back into the booth and nurse the remainder of my coffee, eyes squarely focused on a point outside the window. I'm not in a rush to get anywhere.

Besides, I can see the water from here just fine.


	2. Chapter 2

Home is the house at the top of the hill built around the metal.

The southern half of my town's namesake is mostly residential stuff or a rocky mess of a shoreline that no one's ever really bothered to clean up, but the northern half is this slow, steady rise up a narrow strip of land that juts out into the ocean - at the very end, it's just wide enough to fit the end of the cul-de-sac on, but it's a sheer drop down to the ocean below on both sides. It's a pain in the ass to walk back up to get home, but if nothing else, I have the _uncontested_ best view of the town.

I turn around, at the edge of the sidewalk, and look back out over the town ( _definitely_ not an attempt to prolong my time spent away from home by a few more seconds). The sun's down now, more or less; it's that time of day where shadow and light are almost at an equilibrium, and everything has this sort of soft, uniformly lit appearance. I can see the streetlights starting to pop on at the farthest corner of town - way where M Street gives up at the edge of the marsh - though, so far, there's no sign of the patrols starting up. That's to be expected - curfew doesn't kick off for another hour or so - but there's something deeply calming about being able to see Chapel Bay this dark without lights sweeping up and down its streets and alleyways.

Home is smaller than a lot of the other houses on this strip, actually - still vaguely Colonial-ish, still looking fairly _new_ , but more... modest, maybe. It's a story and a half, kind of; it works like one story, but the top of this cliff is kind of uneven, and the metal thing is at a weird angle, and for whatever reason we couldn't just built _next_ to it, so it has this weird little half-staircase after the den and then the bedrooms and bathrooms are four or five feet higher than the rest of the house.

Oh yeah. The metal thing.

I forget it's there, sometimes.

I suppose that seems weird. To anyone else, anyone not _from_ here, the metal things - these weird little nameless structures (well, not _little_ , really) of rusted iron and copper or whatever alloy it is - these are what _define_ Chapel Bay. I mean, that's why people _come_ here. It's sure as hell not for the food. Or, god forbid, the _culture_. No, people come to gawk at the sights. The wires. The structures. The metal, gleaming dully in the orange light; the rubber cabling looping up and down and around every made thing still standing, just as likely to string between dead ports and plugs as they are to hang loose over the streets.

The metal has dulled with time (how much, I don't know - I just know that I've never seen any pictures where they looked any more polished than they do now, but they sure as hell aren't brand new). There are bits of what looks like rust (but isn't) on them, but no one ever tries to clean them. No one touches them - at least not on purpose. Not people, not animals. The town is built _around_ them, not on; every other possible surface in town is stained with seagull shit, but not the metal things.

((((((The seagulls know better.))))))

But people take their pictures, and they go home, and then they forget about the weird little town with the weird little metal things until they dig out the pictures again, years later, and go _oh, wasn't that a fun day._ And if you're from around here, well...

They're nothing special, to be honest.

They don't _do_ anything. You aren't supposed to fuck with them, and pretty much anyone above the age of four knows better than to try - even the freshmen in the middle of their wannabe graffiti artist phase are smart enough to tag storefronts and houses instead. Not that something _bad_ would happen if you did mess with them, but it's just - you don't _do_ that.

I head up the front walk. The thing that my house is built around is _big_ \- sixty, seventy feet tall, I'd guess, sticking out of the top of the cliff at a weird angle, like some sort of subterranean telescope (which I'm (pretty?) sure it's not) and mostly smooth. There are these weird shallow lines running around the surface of it - the edges of plating, I think - but honestly, it's not something I really give a lot of though. I mean, yeah, the whole thing is kind of cool if you've never seen it before - but I _have_. Every day of my life, for the last just-over-two decades.

For other people, it's a mysterious marvels of unknown origin; for me, it's the thing my house is built around.

It takes some doing, but I manage to resist the urge to kick the door in and sprint for the sanctuary of my room before anyone notices I'm home. Instead, I open the door - unlocked already - and stick my head in the door. "Hello?" I call; quiet enough that I might just go unnoticed, but loud enough that I have plausible deniability if anyone accuses me of trying to sneak in.

No such luck. As I walk inside, over a faded welcome mat and past boots and umbrellas and coats (larger ones, a little worn but still good; smaller ones, brand-new (at least, at first glance)), Mom sticks her head out of the kitchen, hands busy putting in earrings. "Oh," she says faintly, " _there_ you are. I was wondering if I'd get to see you today."

I shrug, but don't respond. I try to continue past her, to my room, but she stops me halfway there with a word. "Wait." I turn towards here, and she levels her eyes with mine. (Or, at least it feels that way, four-inch height difference or no.) "Mr. Orbach said you were out by the beach again today."

"We live on the coast, mom. It's kind of hard not to be by the beach."

She snorts. "That's not what I mean, and you know it. What were you doing out there?"

My lips stay sealed. She knows the answer, anyways. She lets out one of those sighs with a level of maternal disappointment perfectly calculated to trigger my "stop being such a shitty kid" instincts. "Hon, we _talked_ about this. I don't care if I have to help you stay afloat while you get yourself together, but you can't just throw away your life with this shit." Her voice shifts, slightly - sharpens or softens, I'm not sure - "Do I need to call up Dr. Cooperman again? We can move up your next appointment if you think that'd - "

"I'm fine," I mutter. Simon Cooperman is awfully sweet and very well meaning, but I _know_ he tells your mom everything I say - and after last year's surprise outing, I'm not really sure if I can trust him about any of this. "Simon doesn't believe me, anyways."

She laughs humorlessly. "He's not _supposed_ to believe you. That's the point."

I bite my tongue. She's right, and that's the fucking problem. "Well," I spit, "if you think it'll help, then feel free to call him up and tell him your little fuck up is losing her mind again."

I walk past her before she can respond, but before I'm up the stairs, she turns and yells after me, "That is _no_ way to talk to your mother, young man - !"

_"Damn it, Mom!"_

I spin around, halfway up the stairs, ready to yell back, but she raises a hand and closes her eyes. _"Enough_ , Marley. I don't have time for this." She sighs. "The council members are coming over for the evening any moment. I don't care what you do, I don't want to see hide or hair of you. Just stay out of my way."

There are a lot of choice words I could use, but I settle on a seething _"Fine."_ With that, I hop up the last of the steps, through my bedroom door - decorated with the logos and signage of an angry 16-year old; symbols that still feel _depressingly_ relevant - and let it slam shut behind me.

 ~~My room is~~ My room can wait. Simon would approve of me stopping, taking a deep breath, and observing my surroundings as dispassionately as I could in an attempt to recenter myself; right now, I couldn't really care less about what Simon would want me to do. Introspection and clear perception aren't exactly at the forefront of my mind. Not when it's easier to fall onto my bed, face first, and let myself simmer until I fall asleep or my alarm goes off. Whichever one comes first.


	3. Chapter 3

(Sleep came first.)

I'm still in bed when my phone goes off, pulling me out of a shallow and dreamless sleep - not my alarm, but a message. The screen blinks to life as the rumble sings through my bed - _New Message (1). 10:34 PM._ From Claudette ( _cl_ , actually, to differentiate her from Corina's _c_. No one ever said I was creative.) After I quickly scan the message (short, direct, and with proper spelling and grammar - typical Claudette), I take a moment to just breathe, to let the last traces of sleep fall off of me, but that only lasts long enough for me to smell my own breath before I decide I'm better off breathing through my nose.

I pull up to sit on the edge of my bed. It's not raining outside yet, I'm sure of that, but it's fucking _cold_ out, and I really don't want to be caught out without a coat. A quick survey of my room shows, however, that all of my shit is still out in the foyer, and I can't exactly go get it now. Shit out of luck.

The light's on in the hallway. Piss yellow, shining in through the crack at the bottom of my door (that light's going to blow any day now). I pad over - _quietly_ , thank you - and press my ear against it wood. Faint chatter from the living room - not that surprising; town council meetings tend to run late. It does mean I'll have to be careful, though.

I check that the door's still locked.

(Every door in my house has a lock on it.)

(It is.)

Due diligence done, I creep back across my room and slide the window open. Each squeak and groan gives me pause, another moment to glance back at the door, keep an eye out for shadows moving around on the other side. But no one comes (I doubt they would; they're probably on their third or fourth glasses of wine, by now (and that's a conservative estimate)), and soon, the wind is blowing in, carrying with it a chill and more of the omnipresent reek of the sea.

(It's always funny when visitors remark on the smell of the ocean. (Good or bad.) And then, inevitably, they look to me, or my friends, or Mom for validation - like any of us even know what the water actually smells like anymore.)

My window doesn't really open out onto the roof - just a fifteen, sixteen foot drop onto uneven ground that I'd really rather not land on (I've made that mistake before, but only once), but I've been doing this long enough that I can manage just fine. Lean out, reach up, grapple with the top of the window frame - then the edge of the roof - worm my way through the window until I can get my feet on the sill, and then up on to the roof, among the sunbaked shit and cracked shingles.

It's cloudy out tonight. Good. A little cloud cover makes it a hell of a lot easier to get out of here, though I've never really had _trouble_ leaving. The last time I got caught was probably half a decade ago, and I'd like to think I'm smarter than that now.

...Mostly.

The clouds almost make up for the wind, but not quite; it isn't ripping quite yet, but I can see how fast the clouds are moving in front of the moon, and I wouldn't be surprised if there's a storm brewing by the time the sun comes up. (I'm already starting to regret not keeping a jacket in my room.) It only takes a few more steps before I'm at the back edge of my house, facing the ocean; from there, it's much easier to jump down to the ground without an issue. The grass crunches where I land - rain's been scarce this month, not that it's really been a problem for folks on the coast - and I freeze, eyes darting up to the living room window, fifteen feet away. I'm fine, though. The windows are shut too tight against the cold for anyone inside to pay attention to some rustling outside. Blissfully unnoticed, I let my feet take me out of my backyard, into the cul de sac, and down the hill, back towards town. In seconds, I'm just another shadow in the dark.

The downside to living way up on the hill (in the nice house with the good view) is that I'm about as far away from the marsh as possible without leaving Chapel Bay. Which is good, sometimes - like when the summers get hot and wet, and the marsh creeps into the edges of town and _I_ , unlike the unfortunate souls below, don't have to worry about losing a boot to a sudden pit of mud outside my front door where there wasn't one before. But when I need to get to the marsh quickly and quietly, as I do most nights, that extra distance isn't as nice as it seems.

Getting off the hill is kind of a pain in the ass. Down in the town proper, there are alleyways to slide through and front stoops to hide in; the hill, on the other hand, is more or less a straight line from my house to where it meets the main drag. If someone's patrol _does_ end up taking them my way, my options for evasion are pretty limited.

This is a familiar journey, though. I have my routine down pretty pat - stick to backyards until I get to McFadden's, cross the street to take advantage of the busted streetlight (well, _missing_ is maybe more accurate), dash through Jeremy Milton's backyard - he's blind as a bat, and even if he saw me, he wouldn't turn me in. He's convinced I've got the hots for him, which is about as far from the truth as possible - but if it makes my escapes a little easier, I'll let him hang onto his delusions.

From there, it's only another two or three hundred feet of strolling through whichever backyards are the darkest, and I'm done - well, done with the hill, at least; I have another twelve blocks or so until I'm close enough to tonight's rendezvous point for me to start heading into the marsh. In the distance, I can see other likeminded shadows making their way down streets and alleyways to the edges and corners of town where they congregate. Some of them will be headed out the marsh, but that's Big Kid Territory™; a lot of the juniors and sophomores are headed to the other side of town, to bum around in the burned out-husks left behind by the fires of seven - no, eight years ago, while freshman and the rare middle-schooler tend to end up somewhere at the south end of the beach, hiding among the rocks and surf.

 

Everyone sneaks out in Chapel Bay. Everyone without a job and a family, at least.

It's a town tradition.

Take a town with a dead nightlife, a comatose _day_ life, and a sever lack of any way to get somewhere else to have a little fun, and you have an environment ripe for bored kids to make their own fun. Adding a town-wide curfew only throws fuel on the fire. I've been sneaking out since I was 13 or 14 - I was one of those rare middle-schoolers, back in my day - four or five or six nights a week, and while there are certainly rare exceptions, most of my peers did the same growing up. (Corina, actually - she was one of those rare exceptions; she and Kuwat were both too stuck in their books to sneak out with us except very rarely. Well, until now, I guess.)

I can still remember the first time I snuck out. I was over at a friend's house for the night - Ol... Oliver? I can't remember - I just know that they were a year or two older than me, and they were an old pro at this sort of thing. They talked me into it, not that I really needed a lot of convincing, and what stuck with me (besides how much better it was than just sitting in his house) was how _easy_ it was. I wiggled open a window, hurried down a few alleyways, and I was _free_.

I was also terrified. That faded with time; the adrenaline's still there, every now and again, but I realized pretty soon that I was untouchable. The first time I got caught, I got tossed into a cell down at the station for a few hours (just to shake me up a little bit) and barely slept for a week after that; the second time, it only took me a few days before I was ready to start sneaking out again; by the third time I got busted, I was ready to head out again the next day, more out of spite than anything else.

The thing is, _everyone_ sneaks out in Chapel Bay. Not regularly; some take to it more than others, but just about everyone's been outside when they weren't supposed to. And everyone _knows_ this - the cops, the council, our parents - everyone. Everyone knows, and really, no one really cares anymore; it's just a part of living here.

(I wonder, sometimes, why we even _bother_ then - why the hell there's a curfew if no one really cares who breaks it - )

Regardless, we still play the game.


	4. Chapter 4

I give the main road - the highway, technically - a quick glance before I dash across it into Chapel Bay proper. The town's basically this long rectangle, cut into blocks by grid of perpendicular streets. The east-west streets are just letters - I'm on A street, which technically starts at the top of the hill, and we've built up to M street at the other end of town; the north-south streets are just named after whatever bullshit the council thought of, I guess.

I'm just past Main Street, now. It's a bit of a trek to get where I'm going - it was Claudette's night to set the meeting place, and she always chooses this spot _way_ out into the marsh where I guess someone was going to build a walkway and got bored halfway through. It's just some half-finished wooden platforms in the muck, but they're _dry_ , and she's a little particular about that kind of stuff.

_I_ don't mind the muck. The wet and the cold are part of the _experience_ , if you ask me; granted, I'm a little less keen on that experience when I'm coat-less and don't have any boots. If tonight turns into sitting on our collective asses and shivering in the dark instead of wandering around haphazardly in the dark, I guess I can deal with that.

I turn onto Primrose Ave. Quarter of the way there. At first glance, Chapel Bay's streets are nothing but cracked asphalt, flickering lights, houses bundled up against the dark, and scraps of trash (human-made and natural seaside junk) skittering across the pavement. At second glance, you're still liable to see the same thing, because that's all there is to see. I'm flanked by houses on my right and the backsides of beachfront business on my left; the former, all storm shutters and vinyl siding, stained into haphazard vertical slices of color by years of exposure to the elements, the latter, dumpsters and exposed HVAC units, more rust than actual metal at this point.

The streets are still, too. I'm not particularly worried about anyone inside seeing me - there are a couple of sticklers who might call me in, sure, but the rest are pretty laissez-faire about the whole thing. If I get caught, great, if I don't, great - doesn't really matter to them one way or the other. But I'd usually expect to see a few more people making their way out by now. Could be that I'm just getting a late start - I'll lay that at Claudette's feet; she's the one who waited so long to send out the meeting location - or maybe it's just coincidence. It feels a little weird, whatever the reason.

But I'm not going to let it get to me. I'm feeling pretty good right now, all things considered; probably the best I've felt since I woke up this morning. My day managed to be both boring as hell and completely anxiety-ridden, a combination which, even after a solid decade, has gotten no less unpleasant, but the day is past, now. It's night time, and more and more these days it feels like the brightness of the sky is inversely tied to the brightness of my mood. It wasn't always this way - I remember, as a kid, being ready to just go straight to sleep as soon as the sun fell, but... probably since I started _this whole thing_ , actually, the night's been something to look forward to - something that I stumble through the day in anticipation of. That sense of freedom that comes with skipping my bounds has lost its novelty with time, but feels no less potent than it did my first time out.

Still, though, I can't shake the feeling that something's a little off. I'm a little too lost in my thoughts to really worry about it; I get ready to make the turn onto H street -

and the sidewalk blooms with light, barely two feet ahead of me.

The sickly blue-white light is unmistakable. Without thinking, I stumble backwards and slide behind the first thing I see - a trashcan, thank _god_ it's Tuesday - just in time for the sentry to walk into view.

Growing up in Chapel Bay, you see them all the time - mostly during the night, but sometimes during the day; trotted out to show off to the tourists, or to deal with the occasional drunk asshole in a spectacular enough fashion to make people keep a closer eye on how many bottles they've emptied - but that's not nearly the same thing as seeing one up close, in the dark, ready to bear down onyou in a mechanized fury. It's all legs, lights and metal, moving in perfectly orchestrated silence down the road, save for the keening, immaterial whine of an engine you've never seen - led by a man still in his dress blues, a leash wrappedhas hand stretching to the thing twice his height and twenty times his mass.

It's impossible to suppress the shiver of fear that runs down my spine, no matter how many times I see them. It's not even that I'm afraid of being caught - I don't _want_ to get caught, of course; it's a pain in the ass, my mom will chew me out, and I'm starting to get past the age where this is a just a Thing Kids Like Me Do. That's not where the goosebumps come from, though. There's a deeper, atavistic fear you get from seeing something move the way that it does, from knowing that - even if it's not _going_ to hurt you, even if one of the sentries never _has_ hurt someone, even if it doesn't _want_ to, even if the man won't let it and it doesn't know _how_ to by itself - it _could_ crush you like you were nothing, and you wouldn't even have time to say something before you'd be a smear on the pavement.

_Don't turn_ , I pray think, struggling to keep my breathing even - _don't turn, don't turn, don't turn_ -

The light sweeps along the intersection, and then - out of spite, maybe - the man with the leash twitches it, and with a start, the pair turns onto Primrose Ave and starts walking straight towards me.

Despite the brilliance of my hiding place, I need a plan. Option number negative one is just get caught, which I'd really, _really_ rather not do; I can't stay where I am - the sentries have an uncanny ability to just _know_ where things are, especially when those things happen to be people-shaped, heat-emitting, and shaking in an increasingly unhealthy way behind a plastic garbage bin, so I guess my only real options are to pray that it just misses me this time like fucking _magic_ or to _book_ it, throw up my hood, run like hell until my lungs hurt more than they do now, hope that I can get away without anyone recognizing me -

(but what if he does? what if it does? what if it sees me and remembers my face for next time - )

my time to choose is running out fast and it's getting harder to think with every approaching echoing advancing footstep, thoughts and facts slipping away faster and faster stretchering and distorting into falsities and endless what-ifs, fracturing fractaling until everything is just so much shattered glass, drenched in blackened seawater -

 

_plink_

 

The muted "Huh?" of the man in his dress blues cuts through the bile rising in the back of my throat, and is just barely enough to pull me back from the edge of Something; just enough to make me slowly poke my head out from behind my cover and peer down the street to see the sentry, not even seven feet away, follow its walker's gaze down to the other end of the street, to what might be nothing, or might be someone who just threw a rock darting into an alley. There's an awful, horrifying second of waiting, before he yanks the leash again and man and metal make their way away from me in pursuit of something that maybe wasn't there.

I wait until it's safe before I get out from behind the trash and break out into a run down the last few blocks of H Street, not really caring if anyone sees or hears me as long as it means I'm getting farther away from that thing. The last twenty or so feet before I'm on the other side of Washington Street - the backside of the town - are an all-out sprint, and then I'm sliding over the gravel and the damp grass into the ditch at the edge of the marsh, covered in mud and shit and whatever the fuck else but, for now, breathing, slower and steadier, trying not to think about how fucking _stupid_ I am for getting caught, for over reacting, for sliding into all of this shit not even three seconds ago -

Slower.

Steadier.

Footsteps approach, absent the whine of a sentry or the hurried energy of any cops on patrol. I let them come. They resolve into a stop, right by my head, and a familiar shadow looking down at me. It rumbles in a low, quiet voice, "You doing alright, Safety?"

Kuwat Patterson is standing over me, greasy black hair doing little to obscure the expression of amusement and faint concern on his face. I watch as his glasses inch down the bridge of his noise, and with a practiced, probably unconscious motion, he reaches back up and secures them in place. "Could be better," I groan - my lungs feel like they're full of needles, and each breath is just drawing more in and out.

He laughs, sort of, and as much as it's kind of a dick move on his part, it's a welcome sound right now. He reaches a hand down. "Come on," he says, "let's get you moving. Unless you'd rather we just hang out in the ditch all night."

I let him help me up. I guess I'm not in as bad shape as I thought - my left side is pretty damp, and the way it's already clinging to my skin _sucks_ , but I'm pretty free of mud and water otherwise. "Were you the one that was throwing rocks back there?"

He raises his hands. "Guilty as charged." As he returns them to his pockets, his eyebrows arch inwards. "You looked like you were in trouble, and I was walking by, so..."

I nod. "Thank you," I murmur - as much as it galls me that I needed him to help me out, I'm not about to pull some 'I didn't need anyone's help' bullshit. That would be _emphatically_ untrue. I shake my head, and look over at him (well, down at him). "Seriously, thanks. You saved my ass."

He shrugs, same easy smile on his face. "You'd have done the same for me." A pause. "...You good?" I nod. "Alright. Come on," he says, gesturing toward the marsh, "we're already late. Don't want to keep everyone else waiting."


	5. Chapter 5

I've always loved the marsh.

I know that's not what people expect to hear. Most people fucking hate it - born in Chapel Bay, born out of town, it doesn't really matter; it smells weird and bad and the smell carries for a long, long time, you can't _do_ anything useful with it - you can't farm it, there's not a lot there to fish, you can't play in it, building on it is a nightmare - and if it isn't frozen over, it's a horrifying mess of mud and water.

And I fucking love it.

I don't know - I agree with everything I just said. It smells like shit, it's useless, whatever - I know, I know, I _know_ , but there's something about all of those things stuck together that makes it something special. There's just this _vibe_ the marsh gives off, like it's the only thing around here that looks at people trying to own it and says _no, fuck off_ , and there's nothing we can really do about it. It's hostile to us in a way that the ocean isn't; the ocean feels like it's trying to kill us maliciously, with deliberate, calculated acts of violence, while the marsh just _is_ , and it is the way it is as an act of self-defense more than anything else.

And there's something to that - the stance of self-defense; the posture that promises it _will_ fight you if it needs to, but conversely, if you leave it alone, it'll leave you be. You can be in the marsh without it hurting you; it isn't until you try and leave your mark on it that you start to have problems. You can't do that with the ocean. ~~The ocean doesn't care what you think; it just wants to see you drown.~~

That's not to say that it's really safe out here.

The marsh might be okay with us,

but the things in it aren't quite so forgiving.

 

 

 

 

 

...Or so they say.

For what it's worth, I've been coming out here for six or seven years, now, and I've never seen anything I couldn't wave off as a wild animal that just got a little spooked. I've sure as hell never gotten attacked, but that doesn't stop people from spreading stories about that Weird Thing They Saw One Night. Usually they're telling said stories over a sticky bar counter or outside the school, surrounded by other, smaller kids - and, mea culpa, I've told my fair share of bullshit stories too - but some of them stretch a little bit farther back than that. Nothing we'd call a proper town legend, but there are a few common motifs that have an air of truth around them that's hard to dismiss quite so easily.

Night in the marsh is still a safe place for me, though. It feels safer than the town does during the day - it's hard, even with my meds, to dismiss the feeling that people are watching me when I'm out and about, talking behind my back about the crazy Mackenna kid (and it's even harder when I've been proven right (more than once)). Out here in the marsh, under the cover of dark, no one can see me - except the people I want to.

"You sure you're feeling alright? If you're not feeling up to it, you can head back. Hell, I'll walk you back if you want me to."

I turn towards Kuwat, careful not to stumble into the water as I do so.My pen light reflects in his glasses. "I'm fine," I say. "Why?"

"I don't know. You're being quiet."

"I'm just thinking. Don't worry about it."

He holds my gaze for a second before he starts walking again. "Alright. If you say so."

 

I suppose introductions are in order.

Kuwat Patterson is an old classmate of mine. Not necessarily an old friend, I guess, but not really anyone I disliked. I mostly knew him through Corina - he wasn't really on my radar beyond 'that smart kid' until after we all graduated.(Maybe it's unfair of me, but I always wondered if he stayed away from me on purpose because of my whole Troubled Kid thing). It wasn't until Corina started coming out with the rest of us regularly - and, eventually, started dragging Kuwat along with her - that I actually got to know him.

And... he's nice, I guess. Smart - like, salutatorian smart (which maybe doesn't mean as much with a class as small as ours - but seriously, he's fucking smart). Sociable enough - once he realized we weren't in high school anymore and he stopped carrying around the whole "unpopular nerd" cross, he mellowed out a lot. Still kind of has a stick up his ass, sometimes, but - well, he already threw a rock at a cop tonight, so I guess that counts for something.

"Do you know if Corina's coming out tonight?"

"She said she was coming this afternoon." I turn towards him, one eyebrow half-raised. "Why?"

"No reason. Just curious."

Corina was in the same class as Kuwat and I, but I'm pretty sure we were friends well before we were even in school. She's.... I'm not going to lie, it's weird trying to describe someone you've known that long and you're that close to. Corina is not the way she used to be, but... she's more like she was as a kid _now_ than she was when we graduated.

As a kid, up through... probably seventh or eighth grade, Corina was kind of like me. Maybe not as rough-and-tumble, maybe not as much of a troublemaker, but she was game for pretty much anything and cool about pretty much everything. As we grew up, though -

You know what, no. What matters is that Corina was - _is_ super smart. She and Kuwat had this crazy smart-kid friendship-rivalry thing going on, and when it was all said and done, he landed salutatorian, and she came out on _top_. Then... she kind of fell apart. _Badly_. And when it was said and done, she was kind of a wreck, and I was _still_ a wreck, and as much as I felt bad for her, it was nice to have someone else to be a human disaster with for a change.

Well. Is nice. We're both still kind of wrecks.

Oh, and she came out as a girl somewhere during that whole Crash And Burn thing. That was pretty cool, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't play follow the leader a little on that one.

But, I mean - I don't really know what I can say about Corina. She's an innately likable person, you know? Disaster or not, she's just _good_. She cares about other people, she's nice - but not _too_ nice; she's not above having a little good-natured fun at someone else's expense - and, well, she puts up with my shit a lot, so that makes her a winner as far as I'm concerned.

"Hey, is that - ?"

Speak of the devil.

Maybe fifty feet or so, a small orange light is moving through the reeds towards us. Lights out here can be trouble - other group of delinquents, looking to make trouble, or more commonly, patrols that feel like stretching their legs and sweeping through the reeds for a little bit - but as soon as we cast our lights over to her, Corina taps her flashlight on and off in a quick gesture of _yeah, assholes, I see you, please stop pointing your lights in my eyes._

I sweep through the tall grass until I find a dry enough point to cross over to her patch of land. "Hey hey," she says. It takes Kuwat a second to navigate over to us, but he's been coming out long enough to be past stumbling through the water.

"Hey yourself."

"You have any trouble getting out?"

Before I can say anything, there's a small splash behind us and a hushed expletive. I jerk a thumb backwards. "A little bit, but he helped me out."

Corina lets out a low whistle as Kuwat joins us, one calf thoroughly soaked with water. "I was wondering who you were walking with. Nice job, Mr. Smooth."

Kuwat's voice is dry. _"Thanks."_

She flicks off her light as she falls into step next to me - even if there aren't any patrols out here that _I_ can see, we're still better off keeping our visibility low, and between the two of us, there's more than enough light to see by. Corina and Kuwat start up their pleasantries quickly enough, and I'm happy to tune them out halfway - letting their conversation form a nice little bed of familiar noise, sitting comfortably among the quiet croaking of frogs (not that many, though, not when it's this cold out) and the brushing of the reeds at our feet.


	6. Chapter 6

 

"Dead ahead," Corina says, and sure enough, there's another light a little ways off into the distance - pale, and a sort of off-white. Could be a flashlight, but I think it's probably the propane lantern that Claudette usually brings out; light enough that we can see it from here, but totally invisible from the edge of town.

"You seem awfully sharp tonight," Kuwat says with a hint of disbelief in his voice.

Corina chuckled. "Is that a way of asking how sober I am? Hey, Kuwat, come here."

I turn around just in time to see him lean in and her breath right on his face, sending her into hysterics and him reeling. I can smell the alcohol from where I'm standing. "Jesus, Corina, how are you still standing?"

"I'll have you know," she says, forcing her giggles back down into a stony expression, as she lurches forward with a sudden exaggerated sway in her step, "that I'm an _excellent_ drunk, occifer."

I roll my eyes, but keep walking. Kuwat gets back into place alongside her. "You should really pace yourself, you know," he mutters, face unreadable in the dark.

She shrugs. "Hey. I'm still functioning - " a blatant lie, but not one that neither Kuwat nor I feel like calling out at that moment.

We're almost at the light now. Two silhouettes are standing around what is, in fact, the lantern; one of them spies us and waves lazily, and the other stands up and calls out, "Hey! Who goes there?"

That'd be Claudette. (I'd recognize her voice anywhere - high and reedy in a way that stops just short of grating.) Corina calls back, without missing a beat, "Us!" which manages to be useless on just about every level. Claudette groans, and the other shadow snickers in response.

As we step off of the grass and onto the small wooden deck, into the light of the lantern, Claudette steps forward to proffer hugs and greetings. Claudette's a pretty good friend - maybe not someone I'd count on to post bail for me, but definitely someone who'd drive me to the courthouse to contest a traffic ticket - even though she isn't really around that much anymore. Probably because, unlike the rest of us, she's actually _doing_ something with her life - right out of high school, she started doing secretarial work for the town council (or clerical work, or something); nothing particularly high stress, but like, an _actual job_. I'm pretty sure Mom sees her more often than I do, these days.

"Good to see you, Safety." She pulls me in for a quick one-two not-kiss not-quite on each cheek that is _probably_ ironic, but is exactly the kind of bougie bullshit that she'd actually do, so it's hard to really tell one way or the other. She leans in to do the same for Corina, but looks like she thinks better of it, and settles for shaking her and Kuwat's hands.

"What've you got on tap?" Corina asks almost immediately.

"Heads up," the other person says, just before they send a can of something sailing through the air towards Corina (which she manages to catch gracefully). The shadow coalesces into Petya Hagebak, which makes sense, I guess - they're one of two people in our little group that's old enough to actually buy booze from an actual store, and usually end up bringing the drinks by default. Petya is -

"So, Safe, you see any _spooky ghosts_ today?"

Petya's kind of a fucking asshole.

"For fuck's sake, dude," I grumble, "at least give me a chance to sit down."

To their credit, they at least hold out a can as I find a seat around the lantern, even if I wave it away. My meds don't always do too well with alcohol, and I tonight, at least, I'd rather not risk it. (Besides, _someone_ sober needs to keep an eye on Corina.) Petya's an asshole, and they're that special kind of asshole that is so generally decent otherwise that you really want to vouch for them - even if it'd be borderline impossible to defend them to an outsider.

They were a year ahead of me in school, but I've known them for a while anyways - I started tagging along with them when I started sneaking out, and they kind of vouched for me to the rest of that group. (Most of _those_ guys are gone now - moved on to working the boats and drinking in their own homes - but Petya's still around.) So I kind of owe them for that, and I know there isn't really any malice in their teasing and whatever -

(They're still a fucking asshole, though.)

"Lay off, P," Corina hums. She lands in the dirt next to me. Kuwat takes a seat on her other side. "There's not need to be a prick."

They shrug. "I mean, we could always talk about _you_ , if you'd rather us take guesses on how many shots you've downed today."

Corina just laughs. "Dude, I'm your best customer. I mean, I can always go elsewhere, if you're so worried about my health."

Petya holds their hands up in defeat. "Fine, fine. Forget I said anything. I'll just keep my mouth shut."

Claudette takes a sip of her beer. (Singular - Petya's already got an empty one by their side, but she looks like she's barely touched hers.) "How're you doing, Kuwat?"

"Fine, I guess." He shifts the beer in his hands awkwardly - he'll probably take two sips of it to be nice and pass it off to Corina before the night's over. "Still looking at schools."

"Really?" I ask. College-bound kids aren't particularly common in Chapel Bay - not for any particular reason, I guess, it's just... not done. It didn't even cross my mind, to be honest, but I'm probably not a great example. Leaving town in general is pretty uncommon, whether for work or education; I know Kuwat's talked about it in the past, but it's been a while since we graduated. "I thought you'd given up on that."

"I-I don't know." He bites his lip - "I'm thinking about maybe doing something online. I don't really want to leave town if I can avoid it."

"That makes one of us," I mumble. I'm already regretting not having taken that beer.

"What about you, Corina?" Claudette asks.

"Eric wants me to work at the docks." This elicits snorts and chuckles all around.

"Well," Claudette says, "I don't know if you're interested, but there might be a job down at town hall opening up." She leans in, and whispers conspiratorially, "Wendy Madison hasn't been to work in a week."

When everyone, myself included, meets this apparently juicy gossip with a blank stare, Claudette - with a little huff - continues, " _And_ , no one knows where she is. Rumor's going around that she ran off with an out of towner." Lean _way_ in, voice _real_ low: "A _woman._ "

"Isn't she married?" Kuwat pipes up.

"Yeah. With like, three kids."

"Nice," I chime in. I raise my empty hand. "A toast, to runaway lesbians getting free of this god-forsaken town."

Claudette frowns at me while everyone else raises their drinks and chants _hear, hear_ s with varying levels enthusiasm _._ A possible retort is cutoff by a crashing at the edge of the lantern's glow; five heads turn in unison to see the last two members of our little club slide into view.

The shorthaired bane of my existence is the first to appear - "Yo, sorry we're late, guys," she says, phone surreptitiously sliding into her pocket. Rachel Trucco rubs the back of her head sheepishly as she reaches around the circle, grabbing high-fives from anyone who'll let go of their beer long enough. "Both of us forgot our flashlights, so we ended up trying to navigate by the flash on my phone, which - spoiler alert - not really the best plan we've ever had."

I have a lot of thoughts about Rachel Trucco -

Which all go out the window as her perfect, otherworldly companion, the light of my life and the herald of all that is good in the world, the root of happiness and the source of my joy, the resplendent origin of divinity and harmony floats in behind her with steps so graceful they could bring the most hardened of criminals to tears.

"We're also late because I was stuck cleaning up cat barf," says Hunter Wynne. "Hey, everyone."

"Hey, Hunter," I murmur amid a chorus of greetings and how-do-you-dos.

Then Hunter sits down and Rachel slips an arm around her and my Thoughts About Rachel Trucco come flooding back in.

 

God.

_Goooooooddddddddd._

This is so fucking _stupid_ \- "so highschool," as Corina would put it (and has ( _multiple_ times ( _thanks, Corina_ ))) - the whole "having a crush on a girl older than you and out of your reach but she's already dating someone so you just convert all that crush energy into hating their partner instead" thing is _really dumb_ , I know that, I know that on every mental level there is -

But god, I still _really_ like Hunter.

And I _really_ hate Rachel Trucco.

...Okay, that's not really fair. I like Rachel. She's an old friend - I mean, even if she was a year ahead of me, I knew her for the same reason I knew Petya - we snuck out together, and she wasn't a fucking prick to me like some of the older kids were. Even that aside, I've known her to _some_ extent for as long as I can remember - that's just the way things are around here. Everyone within three or four years of each knows everyone else, even if they aren't all friends - you have to go out of your way not to know people. Hell, this whole group - Rachel, Hunter, Kuwat, etcetera - we've known each other since we were old enough to know _anyone_. They're my best friends - even _Rachel_ \- and I'd take a bullet for any of them.

...But I swear, every time I see her look at Hunter the way she does, I rethink how much I _really_ want to stop that hypothetical bullet.

And the worst part is that _I get it._ Rachel's _cool_ \- effortlessly smooth, or at least upfront and honest about all her awkward bits in a way that doesn't feel like posturing; she's tough and nice to look at and oh for fuck's sake, I'm just now realizing that I probably had a crush on her at some point too. _It's not hard to see why Hunter fell for her._ In fact, it's _really easy_ to see that I'm the on in the wrong here, but that doesn't change the fact that my heart feels like it's going to explode so much as Hunter looks in my direction.

"Safety?"

Ah. There we go; goodbye, heart.

I look around to find that everyone else has already stood up. Claudette's futzing with the lantern, while Petya and Kuwat are already a few feet off into the marsh. Hunter and Corina are still looking at me. I blink around at them. "Uh, what?"

Corina bumps the back of my head, and Hunter giggles (god. help me). "We're heading out to walk. Are you coming, or are you just going to sit in the dark?"

Thank whoever's up there that Claudette chooses that moment to turn off the lantern, sending us all back into the dark. I try to get my blush under control while I pull myself back up to my feet. "Yeah, yeah. I'm coming. Sorry." Flashlights and phone lights go on, people fall into their pairs and trios, and we head off into the reeds.

 

We've barely been walking for ten minutes when we find the body.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tl;dr:  
> marley "safety" mackenna - 20 - she/her - our protagonist, crush on hunter  
> corina seidel - 20 - she/her - safety's best friend; former valedictorian, current wreck  
> kuwat patterson - 19 - he/him - safety's friend; former salutatorian  
> claudette fabron - 19 - she/her - safety's friend; workaholic up-and-comer  
> petya hagebak - 21 - they/them - the one with beer; kind of an asshole  
> rachel trucco - 20 - she/her - tomboy cool kid; dating hunter  
> hunter wynne - 21 - they/them - veterinarian; perfect angel, dating rachel


	7. Chapter 7

We hear it first, actually.

There are only two flashlights on between the seven of us; the tell-tale blue-white lights of a patrol are on the horizon (maybe two, maybe three), and we'd rather not attract attention if possible. So we're clustered together into this blob of Person, doing the best we can to fit onto the narrow strips of dry(ish) grass and dirt as we wander aimlessly away from whoever else is out here. Petya's in the lead, holding one of our flashlights, while everyone else tries to feign interest in Claudette's endless string of _scandalous_ town hall rumors. She's in the middle of giving us the lowdown on some top-tier work fridge drama when Petya stops abruptly.

"Did you guys hear that?"

Six heads swivel in sudden silence. Nothing that I can hear; maybe a faint rustling, but it's hard to tell if that's the wind or some small animal scurrying around. Another gust of wind - it's really starting to pick up - throws the marsh into sudden frenzied motion, just for a moment, before everything settles back into stillness. Still nothing. Hunter's the first to speak - "I don't hear anyth-"

Something makes a noise, and we _all_ hear it. Quiet, and at the very edge of my hearing, nearly buried underneath the natural noise of the night. I hear it, but I don't know _what_ I hear - something organic, something alive; maybe a whine, maybe a moan, maybe a keen. A weak birdcall, maybe - we get Wrens that nest out here, though it's way too late in the year for any eggs to hatch.

Petya shines their light over, and Corina does the same. "Hello?" she calls. "Anyone there?"

No response. "Could be an animal," Kuwat mutters, and Hunter gives a little gasp of worry almost immediately.

"If it's hurt, we need to help it - " they start; with a glance at each other and a nod, Corina and Petya break off from the rest of the group, and start to move towards the sound. No one else makes a move to follow them. I pull out my flashlight and shine it at the the ground aimlessly - we need _a_ light here, I guess - but otherwise, I stand with the rest of the group as we watch them walk into the reeds.

And then Corina says - quiet, but audible even from this distance - "Oh no."

"What is it?" I call out. Neither of them respond. I break off from the group to go join them - they're only fifteen feet away, if that - and as I get up onto the embankment they're standing on, the source of the sound comes into view.

That color - of raw, recently split flesh - is unmistakable.

What lies on the ground before us is only vaguely recognizable as a person. Bruises and cuts are caked over with dried blood and mud, leaving its skin a kaleidoscopic mosaic of pain and anguish; several fingers are broken - others might be missing - and the face is a mangled mess; vaguely masculine, but so torn and obscured by filth that it might as well be part of the marsh.

It is also, I realize, still breathing.

Petya speaks, their voice strangely steady and calm, only hints of a quaver below the surface. "Okay, here's what we do," they say. "We call 911, we leave the lantern out here, and then we _book it_ \- "

_"Like hell,"_ Corina hisses. "I'm not going to leave this guy out here."

_"What the fuck do you expect me to do!?"_ Petya growls in turn. "We can't bring them to the cops. We're already breaking curfew - maybe that doesn't mean anything to you guys, but I'm _not_ that young anymore, and _this_ goes _way_ past just sneaking out."

Corina counterpoints. Petya counter-counterpoints. Somewhere in the midst of it, I crouch down - trying not to recoil at the smell of blood and pus and literal shit - and shine my light directly into what I think are still eyes. Pupils contract, and when I remove the light, they focus on mine. Not with recognition, but with a bare, honest plea.

Something moves behind me. "What is - oh, fuck." I turn around. Hunter's standing behind me, hands up to their mouth. The rest of the group starts to fill in behind her. Hunter's voice sounds like it's about to break. "Who - ?"

"Help me get him up," I manage to rasp, and with that, everyone springs into motion. I end up with his head in my hands, hefting up up as Kuwat and Corina find the other sides of his torso. Rachel ends up holding his legs, I think. It's hard to concentrate - I'm trying to force down a panic attack and keep myself from retching; as much as I thought the smell was bad, the tactile sensation of holding up little more than _flesh_ is on a whole other level.

Petya's still arguing - with Claudette, now - I tune back in just in time to hear her yelling " - fucking _go home_ if you're not going to _help!_ We need to get this man to the cops and a hospital _\- "_

_"No cops,"_ he chokes.

Everyone stops moving. I hadn't even thought he could talk, but again, he repeats in a hoarse, choked tone, _"No cops."_ He falls silent, and we're left with that, still holding a man who might not live for long in a cold, wet marsh.

Hunter pipes up. "The vet," they say. "I have a key. And I have an exemption to stay there overnight." They turn and look Petya directly in the eye, voice full of quiet confidence. "I can patch him up, call an ambulance, and if the cops come, I'll say that I saw him in the street outside. No one else needs to be involved."

There's a beat where it looks like Petya's going to fire back with something, but all they do is nod and turn their flashlight back towards town.

"Let's move."

 

If finding a body out in the marsh was surreal, the run back to town is fully dreamlike.

Run might be overstating it. It's more of a brisk walk than anything else - out of all of us, Claudette's the only one with some real muscle on her bones, and having four people trying to carry one person, in the dark, through a marsh with uneven terrain is a little messy.

But we make it work. Petya and Claudette run in front of us, guiding us across the marsh and through gaps in the ground; there are times when we don't have a choice and end up having to splash through knee-high water and mud to keep going. We don't have the luxury of meandering around to find the driest route right now. We just have to move as fast as possible.

The weirdest part of it is the silence. Besides the hushed directives of our leaders and Hunter, murmuring to themselves as they run next to us and check over the body man as best as they can (like a nurse next to an incoming car crash victim in some medical drama), no one talks. Even the man is borderline silent. It transforms the familiar calm of the marsh at night into something threatening and alien.

(I don't know what we'd talk about, anyways.)

We stop once.

The lights of the patrols aren't at the horizon anymore. They're closer - I don't know how much closer, but too close for comfort. We're only a hundred or so feet away from the town proper (almost at the finish line) when I see a blue light, slicing across the reeds, heading straight for us.

_"Down."_ No one second guesses me, not this time; everyone immediately drops onto the dirt, trying to lower our passenger as easily as possible. Silence reigns. I can't see the patrol itself, but I can see the glare of the light shining through the threads of grass anyways. I turn in time to see it cast shadows like bars over the rest of the group, scanning slowly as the light passes us by. (That feels a little on the nose.)

_("No cops.")_

Then the lights are gone; Claudette pokes her head up above the grass, waits, waits, waits... and then hisses, _"Go."_

We hit pavement and asphalt and, in a reprise of my trip out, our brisk walk turns into a lurching run, closing the last few blocks until we hit the vet on H Street in minutes. It's everything I can do to keep my head on straight - the world turns into a blur outside, barely anchored to the solid images of the man and the people carrying him; and before long, not even that.


	8. Chapter 8

We're inside.

The vet's, that is.

I am... leaning against a cabinet, or a counter, or something. Cold and metal. People are still moving around me in frenzied motion - Petya is already saying their goodbyes and on their way out; Claudette close at their heels. Hunter is at the table - the _operation_ table (or is that examination table? what's the nomenclature for the vet?), we're in an exam room; _the_ exam room, I suppose (we only really need one for a town this small) - they're all practiced movement and steel, cleaning out wounds as best as they can and wiping away dirt and grime, wrapping bandages and applying tourniquets; Kuwat is standing opposite them, passing supplies and helping out wherever he can. Rachel is hanging up the phone, murmuring that an ambulance is on the way. Corina is - next to me. At the sink. Wiping off the blood and dirt.

There is blood on my hands, I realize.

(I can't exactly remember how we got here. I mean, I know how we got here - but the particulars of the last... two, three, five minutes - everything in between my feet hitting asphalt and this exact moment - are missing. Abstracted into little more than the one sentence synopsis in a lazy middle schooler's book report.)

There isn't any more blood on my hands.

I'm at the sink - ("Come on, Safe, let's get you cleaned up," Corina said, as she took me by the hand and led me over to the frigid water) - and the water is off. My hands are dry now. I put the towel on the counter and turn to look at the table.

And the man.

I honestly don't know if the stillness of the room and the cold fluorescents make the scene more or less horrifying. They drive away ambiguity, filling the corners of the room with clarity; with that, it's easier to see exactly in what ways his wounds are nightmarish, and just how mundane they actually are. Something about being on that table - on _that_ table, in particular, like a wounded animal dragged in from the cold, a skilled (if still in training) hand doing what they can - makes the entire situation seem so much more controllable (or maybe reducible?).

Corina wraps an arm around my shoulders. "Are you okay?" she murmurs. It feels like I'm hearing that a lot, lately.

"Fine," I whisper. I am - the entire situation is so unreal that it's hard for me to really feel anything but a sort of detached, disconnected _fine-_ ness about it.

Hunter straightens up. "I think that's about all I can do right now," they say. "At least without trying to stitch him up, which I think I'd rather leave to the professionals." They turn and glance at the wall clock. "Rachel, what was the ETA on that ambulance?"

Rachel starts at her name, and blinks at Hunter in a daze for a second before snapping to. "Oh! Uh, I think they said ten minutes, tops. That was... eight minutes or so back."

They nod. "Good. I'll go keep - "

A knock comes from outside. Hunter's head snaps to look towards the front office. We still haven't heard sirens. When the door opens - the door that we made sure was locked, we _must've_ \- they jerk their head towards a door in the corner and raise a finger to their lips. _Quiet._

Fitting four people into a broom closet that's already packed full of medical supplies is not very easy. Managing to do it quietly is even harder.

Ten seconds after the fact, Corina's elbow is in the back of my neck, Rachel's shoulder is pressed into my side, and Kuwat is suffocating somewhere behind all of us. It would be comical, if it wasn't for the fact that the door doesn't close all the way, and from my vantage point, through the crack in the door, I have a perfect view of the mangled flesh on the examination table.

I also see when the other door opens. It's not an EMT.

A cop in his dress blues is in the doorway. I can't see his face well enough to tell who it is, but I can see his expression anyways. When he looks at Hunter, bent over the man, bloody washcloth in hand, he barely reacts.

"Wynne," he says, voice preternaturally calm, "I think you need to explain yourself."

Hunter doesn't even look up. "I was in the middle of wrapping up shop here, when lo and behold, I saw this poor bastard dragging himself across the sidewalk." They scoff. "Couldn't very well leave them out there, could I?"

"No, I suppose not." The man doesn't move from his stance in the doorway. "What's his status?"

"Beaten to shit, but he'll live. I hope." They sweep a free hand around the room. "I'm just trying to keep him alive, though. There's only so much I can do with what I know and what we have here."

"Do you know what happened to him?"

"No. He's barely able to talk."

"We have equipment at the station," he says. "Come on, we can do more for him there."

Hunter finally looks up. I can't see her expression from here, but her voice reads mild disbelief. "The man needs a hospital."

"Fine," he says, "help me get him into my car, and I'll get him to the hospital."

"I already called an ambulance. They'll be here any second." Hunter's voice softens slightly. "If you really want to help, you'll come hold his head up while I try to clean this blood off."

The man licks his lips. He lingers in the doorway for a second, eyes fixed on the body, posture unreadable - before he moves towards Hunter and takes her place. His back is to us. Hunter continues their work, silently, speaking only to ask the man to angle the patient's head.

Sirens outside. Hunter stands up, wiping their hands on their apron. "Come on. Help me get him up." One, two, _lift_ , and just as the front door opens and paramedics begin to rush inside, Hunter and the man stumble out the door, taking our rescue with them.

No one moves.

We stay in the closet, silent except for our collective breathing, until we hear the bell over the front door ring. Slowly, at first, we slip out of the closet, ears and eyes tuned towards the front of the building; as soon as we can be sure that Hunter _and_ the cop are outside, we break into a mad dash for the back door. Farewells outside are hurried and furtive, and as cautiously as possible, we break, headed for our respective homes.

We aren't really in the mood to stay out for any longer.

 

(When I get home - back up the hill, onto the roof, in through the still ajar window - I drop everything I'm wearing on the floor and head straight to the shower. I let it run, floating on the border between hot and scalding, until any remnant of his head in my hands is numbed away.)

 


	9. Chapter 9

_White tide, stay inside._

_White tide, stay inside._

The whispers run up and down the beach and with practiced ease, and people begin to filter back indoors; sidewalks are emptied, windows are shut, and everyone finds a seat by a window, pretending not to look at the ocean out of the corner of their eye.

It's 11 AM tomorrow. Today; the day after we found the man in the marsh. The few texts I've gotten from Hunter haven't told us much of anything - he's been sent to the hospital, the cops believed her about finding the man outside; beyond that, there's been an unspoken agreement among the group to leave it be. I figure if there's something to know, we'll know it in time.

Right now, though, the tide is more important.

I'm in The Diner, again, trying not to think too hard about Hunter and Rachel making heart-eyes at each other a few tables down. (They didn't invite me to join them when I walked in (not that I expected (or wanted) them to).) A cluster of children, out-of-towners, and a few locals are sitting by the window watching the tide. I've seen it before, though. There's nothing too special about it.

Maybe that sounds a little hypocritical, considering how much time I've spent watching the water. This isn't that, though - this isn't the ambiguous, hostile unknown that I fucking _know_ is out there, even if no one else believes me; this is something known. Something that happens a few times a year, usually; something I've seen with my own eyes probably upwards of forty times. It's fascinating to the tourists, but like the metal things, once you've seen it a dozen times, it loses that aura of mystery.

Buzzing tourists and children aside, it's very simple.

Don't touch the white tide.

Don't go near it.

If you do, it'll fuck you up.

The hows and whys of that aren't as clear. It's not like we have a lot of scientific data kicking around on this. We're a small town on the coast; not the kind of community that attracts or funds big-money researchers. The last time someone was stupid enough to go near the tide was well before my time - maybe even before my mother's time. All we really have are scattered, contradictory anecdotes and the dead-seriousness of our parents' warnings to go by.

Still. The buzzing is a little louder than usual.

I look up. There are a _lot_ of people clustered by the window, far more than I'd have expected, and the more I watch, the buzzing takes on a tone that is by turns more excited and more... tense. No one ever keeps an eye on the tide this long. People get bored as soon as they realize there's nothing to _see_ out there. Unless there's something to see out there right now.

I get up. Everyone's facing the window, now, even the people still seated.The waitstaff is clustered around the window, coffeepots and orders forgotten; the cooks are leaning out of the kitchen, trying to catch a glimpse of what they can while their food starts to burn. Rachel and Hunter slowly stand up behind me, lunch date forgotten. I make my way over to the window, craning my head to get a look outside.

It's hard to see - there're too many fucking _people_ here, christ - but -

There's someone at the shore.

There's a weird moment of almost-déjà vu, looking out at them - not really that it's an image I've seen before, but it's one I've been a part of. One shadow, out at the edge of the water. Almost close enough to touch it. Motionless, hands and arms at it's side, staring into the water. Alone.

There's no one else on the beach. Or on the sidewalks; or on the road. I look around the diner, and I see a lot of people fidgeting, talking, and starting - with fear or apprehension or amusement or horror or hunger. All of them rooted in place, though.

Waiting to see what happens.

I turn away from the window and towards the door.

I don't think anyone realizes what I'm doing until my hand's on the doorknob. People are transfixed on the scene outside - they barely move as I shove past them, trying to cut through the crowd. Once my hand hits that metal, there's motion behind me - an uptick in the murmur, a change in the stance of the people in the diner - but they're too slow. I move too fast. The door opens with the kind of creak that usually signals familiar faces coming and going; this time, it causes a handful of people to shout out - "Wait," or "Come back" - a couple of outstretched hands that still won't cross the threshold.

But no one really moves. The door slams shut behind me, and I break into a half-run. "Hey!" I call out - and when I don't get a response, a louder, more insistent _"Hey, you!"_ The person is still motionless. (I realize, with a sudden bit of clarity, that I have no idea what the hell I'm doing - a thought that quickly gets filed away in a mental cabinet for useless information.)

I cross the street, and I can see now that the person - a woman, I think - is closer to the tide than she looked from the Diner's window. My gait turns into a sprint as I continue to yell out after them, repeating over and over _Hey!_ and _Stop!_ \- as she continues to stand, oblivious. (Is she deaf?) There's a slam behind me. Another pair of footsteps (distant).

Closing the distance - fifty feet (loose, off-white sand kicking up behind me), twenty feet (edges of dark around my vision, throat ice cold, shades of last night), ten feet (move, move, just) _move_ you fucking -

She's a little old lady like the dozens of others that come through on any given day. White hair in a dangled mess, sunglass hanging around her neck on a lanyard, fanny pack crooked around her hips, pale yellow and pink floral-print shirt (the kind my own grandmother wore, according to Mom). She's inches away from the water. I try to keep my yell of _"Hey, lady!"_ from being a shriek and I don't know if I succeed. I lunge across the last few feet to grab her by the arm and pull her away, and as I do, we both _twist,_ and the tide just _kicks up_ in a spontaneous spray -

~~ (It's a mess of white foam that almost looks alive - alive and boiling, spilling over itself with unknown anger; it has more in common with a pot of water that's been on the stove too long than any ocean I've ever seen - it's terrifying, and it's in that moment that I realize although I know all of the warnings, and although I've been told why the water is the way it is - I don't actually know that for certain - ) ~~

~~ (and oh lord, it feels _luminescent -_ ) ~~

~~[~~  
~~]~~ sh e's staring straight at me, arms slack, eyes blank. She blinks at me - and each with each flutter of her eyelids, a little more life creeps back into her eyes. Eventually, she sputters out in the most stereotypical Old Nice Grandma voice, "Wh-what?"

I need a moment to catch my breath. Someone stops behind me. "The fide," I manage to get out. "You gotta get away from the fide, lady. It's not safe."

The words don't immediately make it into her brain, but as soon as they do, she seems sharp and alert. "Oh!" she says - a nervous glance thrown at the water, a step away from it, closer to the beach - "Oh, I'm so sorry!" She has the most sincerely apologetic tone you think you've ever heard. "Oh, I just didn't _know._ What makes it _do_ that?"

"Algae." I turn around. Rachel is standing awkwardly behind us, shifting from foot to foot. "Some kind of local algae in the water. It's usually harmless, but a couple times a year it gets really intense. Believe me, you don't want to touch it if you can avoid it."

"Oh, _my."_ The woman looks toward me for confirmation, and I nod. "Oh, my. Well thank you, young man." I don't suppress the wince nearly as well as I want to.

"Come on," Rachel continues, "let's get you inside with everyone else, okay?"

The woman nods ever-so-slightly, and heads back up the beach on unsteady legs. Rachel turns to me and drops her voice below anything the woman can hear. "Are you okay? You guys didn't get any on you?"

I nod. My hand goes to a spot on my wrist that feels wet.

"I'm fine."


	10. a passing thought in the water

I've never been happy.

I'm not sure anyone around here ever has.

There are moments -

(flashes of enjoyment, peace, humor, serenity, lasting seconds or minutes or even hours - )

\- but that's all.

 

There's something about this town that goes beyond the suffocating staleness of home. It feels like everyone is perpetually on edge, waiting for something -

someone (?) -

to snap - and then it'll all go to shit. And it never does, but I can still feel it in the air. Like the smell of burnt hair turned tactile and visible. Everyone just has this _look_ in their eye that screams _something bad is coming and I don't know what or when_.

Including me.

 

It's not like I can ever remember not feeling like this - but I can vaguely remember not having an awareness of it. Not being self-conscious about it. Not knowing that I wasn't _supposed_ to feel like this.

The first time I gained that awareness was over a decade ago.

(Maybe a decade and a half. It's one of those childhood memories that's too fuzzy timewise for me to pin it down; I have a general idea of how old I was, but in my remembrances, any childhood reflection of myself is replaced by the me of now - a scruffy twenty-year old in an ill-fitting jacket, standing among children, swinging my ~~mother's~~ father's* hand as I strut.)

I:

Am on the sand. Walking back towards mom. The beach is empty, like it usually is, but she's there, and so is another man I don't recognize - but as I approach, he leaves. Unimportant. One of her hanger-ons. He's not the only stranger there - just a little farther down, picture perfect, like something that hopped straight out of the tv, there's another group. Little nuclear family. Tourists. Mom and Dad and two darling kids. One of which looks over at you as you approach and smiles at you in a way that terrifies you - not because he has the wrong kind of teeth, or a threatening face, or because of any sudden onset of childhood infatuation.

 

I just hadn't realized that people could look that happy.


	11. Chapter 11

I don't feel very good.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (the start of this chapter is supposed to fade in from white/transparent text to black. My text editor supports this; ao3 doesn't (I think), so, apologies for that.)

she scoffs. "Safety is no name for a young - " she cuts herself off (maybe at the look on my face). "Ugh. Whatever. Look," she sighs, "I'm not going to force you to do anything, but I really wish you'd see Dr. Cooperman. Or at least go down to the station and talk to a medic again. If you got some of that on you - "

"I didn't."

Mom lets out another long-suffering sigh. "Fine. If you say so. But your name already comes up often enough while I'm trying to work. The last thing I need is for you to get sick. It's not like I can just stay home and leave the town mayor-less if you end up in the hospital or need someone to take care of you. I'd rather head off problems down the line - "

_"I'm fine,_ Mom."

I don't have to look up from my phone to envision the look on her face, or the way she throws up her hands and rolls her eyes as she pulls the door closed behind her.

(I am not fine.)

It has been a long, stressful day of people asking me in hushed voices if I'm okay or if I got anything on me and being poked and prodded and whispered about and pointed to at the edges of my vision and I'm fucking _done with it._ The immediate aftermath of grabbing the woman (who's name, I later learned, was Doris (because of course it was)) was a lot of very quiet talking and people trying to pretend nothing happened and that they hadn't all just watched Doris almost touch the tide. By the time I walked back into the Diner, everyone had very studiously returned to their plates and booths, and deliberately didn't look up as I walked in - all it took, though, was one concerned samaritan leaning over and asking if I was okay before the floodgates opened and people got a little less covert about their gossiping and whispering.

Not an ideal scenario for me.

(When the cops showed up and started poking around, I felt like I was ready to scream.)

Eventually I gave up and fled across town back into my room, where I've spent most of the afternoon - lying on my bed and staring at the ceiling, trying to busy myself with Twitter and books and loud music and failing entirely with all three. The last half an hour has been a lot of watching the light of the (now setting) sun reflecting through the orange scrip bottles on my windowsill across the pale purple of my wallpaper and staring at the mirror in my room, trying to figure out whether to break it or cover it up - it's one of _those_ days, too, on top of everything else; a day where my reflection makes me want to vomit and my skin feels like it's coming off, curling up at the edges like paper on fire, and where I'm not sure if I'm better off looking in the mirror and hating what I see, or laying in bed and letting myself try to remember what I look like until my self-image is a horrifying, cartoonish caricature with proportions that defy any kind of reality (neck like a tree trunk, head the size of a pea, shoulders too wide to fit through doorways, body perpetually contorted - crippled, twisted, crumpling under my own weight).

It's been a day.

My phone rumbles. It's Corina, calling. Again.

I pick it up. "Hi, again."

_"Hey, again."_

"I told you, Corina, I'm fine." Honestly, I should probably be worried by how little guilt I feel every time I tell that lie.

_"I know. That's not why I'm calling. ...Unless you want to talk - "_

"Corina."

_"Right. Right."_ There's a moment of... hesitation on the other end. _"Are... are you still up to coming out tonight?"_

God. I hadn't even thought about it, to be honest - between today and last night, I'm not really in the mood to do anything other than sneak a little too much booze out of the fridge and stay in bed. "I don't know, Corina. I'm not really feeling up to it."

_"C'mon, please?"_

I shift the phone to my other ear. "...Who's night is it?"

A crackle; a hiss. _"Kuwat's."_

"Ugh." Look, I love Kuwat, and he isn't quite the goody-two-shoes he was when we were in school - but when it comes to choosing a place and getting the beer, he's still more likely to get something _legal_ than something _good._ "I've had a fucking _day_ , Corina. I need to not think for a while. Non-alcoholic baby piss isn't going to cut it."

_"Saaaaafteeeeeeey..."_ Cripes. _"Please?_ Please? _Look I'll come and_ get _you, okay? I just... don't want you to be alone tonight."_ More crackle. _"And... everyone else besides me and Kuwat canceled, and he's being all_ weird _around me lately. Besides,"_ she said, drooping into conspiratorial tones, _"you have a best friend who's bringing a secret flask anyways."_

"God bless you," I breathe. "Fine, fine. I'll come."

_"Thanks, Safe. ...Look, I - if you really don't want to come out, I don't want to force you to do anything - I can just head over there and we can smoke for a bit - "_

"No, no, I want to head out." This is a lie when I start saying it, but it becomes more true as I reach the end. Some time out in the night air with a smaller group than last night sounds better than sitting in my room and feeling like shit. "...If you want to come and get me, though - "

_"Of course. I'll text you when I'm outside, okay?"_

"Okay. See you, Corina."

_"Later, babe."_


	13. Chapter 13

I'm not _totally_ clear on what's in Corina's special flask, but I _do_ know that it's _very_ good and half-empty by the time by the time we reach Wilson's Hollow.

The marsh feels infinite, sometimes. There are nights where I'd swear I've walked for hours towards the trees at the edge of the marsh - not that we can really ever see them in the dark of night - without ever closing the distance to them even a little bit. During the day, it's easy to hop in a car and drive out to the woods (not that it's really safe to do so; the roads inland are still mostly dirt, and they've always been messy), but once night falls, it's like the borders of the marsh disappear, and the networks of streams and reeds continue on into the dark forever.

They have to, of course. The marsh feels infinite, but all that water has to come from somewhere, and if you're willing to chance being seen, you can stick to one of those dirt roads for half a mile or so until the marsh thins out and you find yourself walking along one of the rivers that runs into it.

I don't actually know what the river's called - it might not even _have_ a name - but there's a point, a little bit farther inland, where a branch of it splits off and ends in a little pond. Wilson's Hole. (It feeds back into the river underground, I think.) I don't know who Wilson is, or why this is his hole; I don't even know if that's a real name. I've never been able to find it on any map, and I've never heard it mentioned outside of my friends (and the people who showed me it, when I was younger).

It's nice, though. Wilson's Hole is just far enough away from the marsh that the ground is solid and dry, and there's plenty of places to sit. The water itself is nice - good to cool off your feet, and perfectly suited to the occasional round of half-drunk skinny dipping - but it's too cold to really think about that, now. Even if we're technically out of the marsh and away from the beach, there's still plenty of that ocean breeze sweeping in, and the wind is just as cold tonight as it was last night.

Oh, and I forgot my coat again.

Kuwat's already waiting when we get there. True to form, he has some non-alcoholic beer which Corina and I both accept (gratefully, although we definitely share a look when his back is turned). He's got a little fire going, actually - not much more than kindling, but it's a little warmth and a little light. I think he might've been a Cub Scout or something. (I don't even know if we _have_ Cub Scouts here, actually.) However it got made, it's nice, and I tell him as much as I sit down. There aren't any chairs out here - it's too far of a walk to carry anything - so we have to make due resting on the slightly damp, cold as hell ground.

Conversation's light.

Kuwat makes a passing attempt at talking - we talk about his day, and Corina's day, and briefly touch on current events - which we abandon pretty fast; Kuwat and Corina are pretty matched smarts-wise, but he's way more informed than either of us are these days, and trying to talk to him about anything political inevitably turns into a pretty one-sided conversation. So we let him talk about some shit in the EU, and then the conversation dies for a bit.

Then he asks about what happened earlier, with the tide, but... there's not really anything I can say about that.

"Seriously, _nothing happened."_ I roll my eyes. "It's not that big a deal."

"Well, _I_ think it was brave of you," Corina says. "The way I hear it, no one else was a in a big hurry to rush outside."

Kuwat nods his assent. "Rachel and Hunter were making a pretty big deal of it when I ran into them."

My ears perk up at that. "R-Really? Hunter was talking about me?"

My so-called friends let out nearly identical snorts. "Wow," Kuwat deadpans. "Corina's right. You _do_ have it bad."

I frown at both of them. "You guys suck."

Still, Kuwat continues. "So... what was it like? The tide, I mean?"

"Honestly, if you've seen it from a window, you've seen it up close. It's nothing special," I shrug - "it's just white foam. Looks more like... bath bubbles than anything else." Or boiling water. "It's kind of funny, actually. I mean, I know it's _dangerous_ , but it just seems so silly up close."

"Huh." Kuwat leans back. "That's kind of disappointing."

I shrug again, and we collectively let the conversation lapse into silence. A vaguely nervous one. Not necessarily because of what happened today; not because of the weather (it's colder than last night, I'd say, but the wind isn't nearly as strong. No danger of the fire going out). We're far enough away from town that no one's worried about us being seen out here. But there's something in the air - the shadow of last night still hanging over the next. We never really talked about what had happened, and we had our excuses - everyone split and ran home, and then all throughout the day, we were just collectively waiting for information, or working at our jobs, or we could not talk about it because we were around people or in crowds -

But out here, this late at night, this far away from people, there aren't any excuses left. There's nothing keeping us from talking about what happened other than the fact that none of us want to think about it that much.

Kuwat's acting strange, too. Not in any way I can comfortably name or bring up. He's just a little off-kilter. Voice a little clipped, here and there. Friendly barbs are a little sharper than usual. Every time I glance back at him, he's watching me out of the corner of his eye - and snaps his gaze somewhere else immediately. So I let myself stare at the marsh, or the fire, or the pool.

~~ The surface of the water flickers uncomfortably. I do not mention this. ~~

The fire's not _that_ big, though, and the cold sets in pretty soon. Last night, I had conversation and adrenaline to keep the elements at bay; now, there's not a whole lot keeping me from shivering and chattering a little bit. Corina's the first one to bring it up.

"Are you sure you're doing okay, Safe?"

"Just a little chilly," I say.

Corina clucks disapprovingly. "Hold on. Come here." She unzips her (very big, very fluffy) coat and holds it open for me to share one side of, and both it and she are _very warm_ and _very nice_. I let out an unintentional and highly undignified coo of appreciation at the gesture and accompanying warmth. "Dumbass," she chuckles.

Kuwat is staring daggers at me.

"I can't believe you forgot your coat _again_ ," she mutters.

"Not my fault," I mumble. "Shitty day."

"Yeah," she sighs, "you and me both. I've just been feeling _gross_ all day. Better now, though..." she trails off.

"Sure you guys didn't just forget your pills?" Kuwat mutters.

I blink at him, not really sure if I heard him correctly. Corina has a similar reaction, but it only takes her a few moments to slowly remove herself from her (our) coat and stand up. "I need to piss," she says simply, and without another word turns and stalks off into the woods, leaving me and Kuwat alone. I wait until the sounds of her retreat have stilled before I spin back towards him.

"The fuck is your _problem!?"_ I hiss at him. "You're being a real asshole right now, you know that?"

His head snaps up, ready to fight. "Oh, step _off_ , Safe - I don't - " Whatever he had to say hangs on the edge of his tongue, before slowly, he deflates and hangs his head. In a much more subdued voice, he says, "I... I know. I'm sorry, okay?"

I sigh. It takes a moment, but I try and let my own aggression drain out before I continue. I still have a little bite in my voice, though, as I retort, "What's going on with you, dude? I mean, is it just - is it because no one showed up?" No response. "....Corina says you've been acting weird for like, _weeks_. Did you guys get into a fight or something?"

"No. _No._ Nothing like that."

"Well, then _what?_ We don't - no one wants to be around an _asshole_. Hell, Corina asked me to come out tonight because you've been acting so... so..."

I can't find the right word, but that incomplete fact alone is enough to make Kuwat's face contort in regret. "It's not - it's not - " he stops, stutters, and mumbles with something akin to resignation and fear, "I think I _like_ her."

...Okay. That was not what I expected. Hesitantly, I continue. "...So - so that's... _great_ , isn't it? I mean, just _tell_ her, I'm sure she'd be, you know, _cool_ about it."

_"It's not that simple,"_ he hissed. "I - "

A crash behind us makes him start. Our heads snap towards the form of Corina, walking back from the woods, and as she enters the light, I try to steel my expression back into something more neutral. "Later," I mouth at him, trying to make it as clear as I can that we _will_ be talking more. Whether he likes it or not.

Kuwat isn't looking at me, though. He's watching Corina, whose face looks... ashen. Pained. "C...Corina?" he ventures. (Had she heard us? Was she _not_ going to be cool about it?) "What's wrong?"

By response, she just turns raises her hand. She's holding her phone, and there're a sequences of messages on screen - texts, from Petya.

"He's dead," she says. "The man from last night.

"He was murdered."


	14. Chapter 14

_AREA MAN FOUND DEAD IN HOSPITAL_ , the headline reads - _FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED_.

"Holy shit," Rachel breathes.

No one else speaks, but the sentiment is clearly echoed.

The seven of us are arrayed in a half circle around the folding table in Claudette's garage, staring down at the stark, unavoidable message at the top fo the newspaper. Even after getting the text last night, even after coming here and opening the door and seeing the tight, drawn faces inside, the entire situation still had an element of surreality about it - as much as I knew that, factually, that night had happened, and I had carried a dying man out of the marshes, and that man was _still_ dead now, it didn't _feel_ real. That happened, but it felt more like I had seen it in a movie, first-person. Like it happened to someone else, and I was just watching.

This, though - something about seeing it here, on the paper, in the middle of the day -

'Holy shit' is right.

Petya picks up off the table and clears their throat. In a clear voice, they start to read:

"CLINTON - A local man was found dead in his hospital bed late on Wednesday evening by police officers that had come to question him regarding prior injuries.

"James Alvarez, aged 32, had been brought to Clinton General Hospital after midnight the previous day by EMTs and immediately placed into intensive care to treat pre-existing injuries. Hospital representatives described Alvarez's injuries as 'extensive,' noting that while they were reluctant to divulge specifics, Mr. Alvarez had sustained a series of abrasions and lacerations that would've been life-threatening without further treatment. They had been, however, confident that, given time, he would recover, and was tentatively considered stable by sunrise the following day.

"The source of the victims injuries had not been ascertained by the time of his death; the only details available were that he was apparently found in Chapel Bay. Investigators had arrived at the hospital after being notified that he was awake and alert, with the intent to question him and determine what, exactly, had happened; upon arrival, however, Mr. Alvarez was unresponsive, and he was declared dead shortly thereafter.

"Both the investigators and hospital representatives refused to release details of his death, but the Clinton PD was clear that they considered his death a homicide."

Petya stops reading for a moment. Silence dominates the garage, but they continue:

"Mr. Alvarez, a lifelong resident of Clinton, was a freelance journalist with contributions both to this paper, and to multiple internet-based publications. Prior to 2013, he was the senior editor in charge of homicide reporting here at the _The Report_ , but left a full-time position to pursue other opportunities. Most notably, he received the 2015 _Minako Nakagawa Award_ for excellence in reporting, for his coverage of the rash of as-of-yet unsolved disappearances in the Clinton area. The cases represented something of a pet project for Mr. Alvarez, and as of our staff's last contact with him, he still maintained an interest in continuing his investigation.

"Mr. Alvarez is survived by his husband, who has requested that his identity not be disclosed to the public at present. We nonetheless ask that our readers keep Mr. Alvarez and his family in their thoughts, and join us at the _The Report_ in remembering our dear colleague and friend. We will continue to investigate and report on this story as it develops."

Silence again. Petya drops the paper on the table and leans over it, looking at each of us in turn.

"So."

"Jesus Christ," someone mutters.

"That poor man," someone else said, followed by murmurs of assent -

"I guess that's the end of that," someone else - Claudette? - says -

"Hold the fuck _on,"_ Petya snaps. "Are - are you kidding me?" They look around the table, disgust on their face. _"That's the end of that?"_

Hunter speaks up. "Well, what else do you want us to say? The guy's dead, let's just... move on."

Kuwat shakes his head. "No, Petya's right. This - this is _weird_ , guys. I mean - from the start, this has been weird, you know - but..."

"If this had just ended with him landing in the hospital," Corina said, _"that_ would've been weird. This is... something else."

"Yeah."

Claudette waves them off. "So _what?_ Plenty of weird stuff happens around here. Let the cops handle it. That's their _job_. No reason for us to get involved."

Petya shoots back, "We're already inv- "

_"No, we aren't."_ She glares at them. "Except for Hunter, no one knows that we're involved with _any_ of this, and I'd rather keep it that way, thank you very much. Besides, I think I remember a certain _someone_ telling us to leave him out there and let the cops find him - "

_"That's not the same thing,"_ Petya snarls -

Everyone shuts up as Rachel slams her hand on the table. _"Stop it._ Both of you. You're acting like _children._ I don't even know what you're _fighting_ about right now."

Both of them fall silent. Hunter raises her voice, hesitantly. "I - I don't... I don't get it. What are you saying, Petya? What do you want to do?"

They open their mouth to respond, then close it again, lost in thought. Everyone follows suit - even the people that share the sense that something is _wrong_ here don't really know what that means, or what to do about it. Something nags at the back of my mind, though.

"No cops," I whisper.

Claudette looks up. "What?"

"When - when we were pulling the guy - Alvarez - out of the marsh. He said no cops, right?" Hesitant nods around the table. "I mean, at the time, I thought - I don't know, maybe he was _into_ something - illegal - and that was why he was all messed up, or... or maybe he was afraid of being deported, but - but with this..."

Claudette's face is stern. "You better not being saying what I think you're saying, Safety."

"...They were already out there that night," Corina says. "We saw them on the way out. And back in. Maybe they were just on their usual patrol, but maybe - "

"They were looking for _him,"_ Petya finishes in a hushed voice. Corina nods.

"You guys are being ridiculous." Heads turn to stare at Claudette. "You're letting yourselves get worked up over _nothing_ and spinning _conspiracy theories_ out of thin air."

Rachel looks hesitant, but Hunter nods. "We all read the article. This guy was investigating - what, disappearances? I mean, that... that sounds like your culprit to me. He probably got too close to something, and - "

"I don't buy it."

"What about the cop that showed up at the vet's? That seems like it was _awfully convenient_ timing."

"Come on, _anyone_ could've called him in. All anyone had to do was look out their window and see people moving around inside after curfew."

"You don't think there's something even a _little_ suspicious about that? After they were already out there looking for him?"

_"Maybe_ they were out there looking for him. We don't know that."

"I still don't understand what reason the cops would've had for doing... whatever it is you guys think they did."

"I mean, you said it yourself. The disappearances, right? Maybe he was investigating the town, and found something he wasn't supposed to - "

"So now we've progressed to the cops covering up - what, a string of kidnappings? Or _murders?_ Based on nothing but a bunch of circumstantial - "

"The man is _dead_. That's not circumstantial."

"But we have no way of knowing who killed him."

"There _were_ a lot of patrols out that night - "

"There are patrols out there _every_ night."

"What are you even proposing we do, Petya?"

"I don't know, but I'm not going to sit around and do nothing while - "

"While some cops - our _neighbors_ \- continue to do _nothing wrong?_ The man's been dead for less than a couple days, at least give them time to - "

"Cover up?"

_"Investigate._ If you can't trust them, who can you - "

"That's a really nice sentiment, but that's all it - "

"What does this even to do with us? Why should we - "

"Because if they're willing to kill a stranger, then how long until they're willing to kill one of _us_ for - "

_"Enough!"_ Claudette spits out. "I'm not going to stand here and listen to you idiots run in circles and talk _shit_ about our neighbors like a bunch of _paranoid freaks - "_

She cuts herself off. Stops and turns to me, wide-eyed, hand to her mouth. Ten other eyes follow. "Safety," she says, "I - I didn't mean - "

"No." My voice feels hollow; my tongue thick. "You're right. You guys sound like me off my meds." I pick up my coat from where it landed on a chair, and turn to leave. "Forget it. The guy's dead. Just... let it go."

I open the door and step outside. Someone calls after me, but I don't respond.

A day at the beach sounds kind of nice right now.

 


	15. Chapter 15

The water is black today. The surface is calm.

The thing underneath is not.

 

I've always been a nervous kid.

Lots of kids are nervous. There's a lot to be nervous about in preschool, elementary school, middle school - I think most adults remember, to some extent, how ruthless that environment is, but they remember it with the benefit of distance. As a bad thing that happened for a little while, as disconnected incidents of distress; it's only when you're in the middle of it that you can really understand how that atmosphere of - I don't know, _threat_ maintains itself, day after day, through school hours and still as a lingering sensation afterwards - when school _was_ part of your life, it is easy to disconnect from it; when school _is_ your life, when all you know is being in school and being in that environment, it's hard not to feel like _everything_ is the most important thing you'll ever do, and even minor slip-ups are the end of the the world.

Lots of kids are nervous. Not ever kid spends half their weeknights staring at the ceiling for long hours, unsure if they're going to cry or break something or break themselves.

But part of growing up a nervous kid is learning to hide it. How often do you have to tell a parent or a teacher that you feel worried all the time - and hear, in turn, that you just need to relax - before you learn that you're better off just keeping things to yourself? How many times do you need to say "I'm depressed" and be told that you don't know what that word means before you learn that no one does understand you, and you _can't_ "talk to me about anything?"

So I kept my mouth shut. And things, slowly but surely, got worse.

I don't want to do the whole song and dance of my medical history. It's not something I like to think about; needless to say, there's a reason I'm on the meds that I'm on (and there's a reason I'm reluctant to take the HRT dive with Corina). What I will say is that I wasn't lying back there. My anxiety's manifested a bunch of different ways in the past, but when I was at my worst - junior into senior year -all of my garden variety depression and anxiety mixed _poorly_ with the climate of high school. If there's one thing high schoolers are good at, it's gossip, and it was really, really easy for that fact to transform generalized anxiety into outright paranoia.

It didn't help that the more paranoid I got, the more people actually _did_ talk about me behind me back.

I couldn't sleep, I couldn't think straight, I stopped sneaking out with friends - I started seeing stuff after a while, and to this day, I'm not really sure how much of that was sleep deprivation and how much of it was just my fucked up brain. The worst part was knowing, somewhere underneath it all, that all of that paranoia was still fundamentally _wrong_ \- I could see and feel this almost plasticky texture on things of my own imagination that clearly signaled what was and wasn't real, but I was too far gone to recognize or act on it.

It took some scars before people started to realize that maybe someone should _do_ something.

 

I bring this up as a disclaimer. I bring this up to tell you that I've seen things that other people haven't before; I've been in this situation before, but I'm better now. Not completely - I don't know if ever will be - but it's managed. I've been here before.

And this is not that.

The thing in the water doesn't feel like plastic; it feels like heavy smoke, like a puddle of gasoline, like lead paint and the suffocating heat of an old, wasp-infested toolshed on a hot summer day.

It feels restless.

I still don't know it's name -

But I don't feel like it needs me to name it.

In the three months I've been aware of it, I don't think it's ever cared one way or another if I was here.

(Footsteps behind me.)

"Safety?"

I don't turn around. "Hey, Corina."

She pads up next to me. "You doing okay?"

I sigh. "Yeah. I guess."

Neither of us move. I just let the sound of the waves wash over me; things in the water notwithstanding, the noises of the ocean are still calming. I let my eyes drift up to the sun for a moment, and shut them against the light. The rays play across my eyelids, replacing visions of the waves with the psychedelic eddies and flows of blood through my veins.

The water's still there when I open my eyes.

"What happened?" I ask. "You guys kill each other?"

She huffs in response. "Basically. People kind of shut up for a moment after you left, but it only took a few minutes before they were all yelling at each other again. No one really changed anyone else's minds, I don't think." She pauses. "Were you serious? Do you really think there's nothing wrong?"

"I don't know." In all honesty, I'd be lying if I said I thought Petya was wrong. As much as I'd like to think everyone in town was great, I know otherwise firsthand. But... "I don't really know enough of anything to be sure, right now."

Corina sighed. "Yeah, I'm in the same boat." I stiffen, for a moment, at the movement behind me - but before I can respond, Corina wraps her arms around me in a loose hug. "...We don't think you're crazy, Safe. You know that."

I hang my head. "I know _you_ don't."

"Neither does anyone else. It's just..."

Corina practically deflates against me. "I don't know. I wish I had something to say to make you feel better. Everything's just kind of fucked right now."

"Yeah."

I close my eyes again. I think about the sun, sitting on the horizon at 1 PM. I think about missing coats. I think about bodies in the marsh, and how we very nearly never found Daniel Alvarez. I think about how many other people could've been out there. I think about the hundreds of nights I've spent in the reeds, knee deep in shit, far away from my warm bed, and how many times I might've walked past other Daniel Alvarezes and just not seen anything. I think about nebulous conspiracies and The Man and journalists. I think about spending my life working to uncover truths and educate people. I think about how honorable that must be, and what that's worth if, in the end, all that got Mr. Alvarez was a body full of mud and pain, and a silent death in a hospital room after the worst of it was supposed to be over. I think about Kuwat telling me that he likes Corina. I think about what it would be like to kiss her. Right now, maybe. I think about what it would be like to never kiss her. I think about still being a Boy when I die. I think about Simon Cooperman and my mom. I think about Dad.

And I think about the water.

Corina makes a noise, and I realize that I've been thinking for a while. My hands are still in my pockets. "Come on, Safe. Let's go get some food, or something."

I make a noncommittal noise, and keep my eyes locked on the water. I don't know what I'm even looking for right now. Answers, maybe. Monsters. Something to leap out onto the beach and kill me so I can stop thinking for a little while.

~~ My head is starting to hurt. ~~

The sensation of the Thing is rising, like the onset of tinnitus, swelling - not to a climax, but just a slight ringing in the fabric of things, just above the median noise of the world. Edges are starting to feel a little uncertain. Outlines less stable.

Something's wrong.

Corina speaks again. Her voice is more insistent, but more - worried? Nervous? There's a quaver when she says - pleads - "Safety, _please._ Let's - let's go, okay?"

I turn to her for the first time since she's arrived. Her eyebrows are bent. A reassuring smile at the corners of her mouth isn't very convincing. There is something familiar shimmering behind her eyes. It looks like an eighteen year old boy named Marley Mackenna, staring at his bathroom mirror and trying to figure out if his hand is actually bleeding and whether or not he did that to himself and wondering if the pile of fallen teeth collecting in the sink is real too.

The world drifts out of focus - terrain and buildings become flat, detail-less planes and shapes, devoid of color or texture - and then, one by one, things go dark and fade into non-existence, as I whisper, "You can feel it too, can't you?"

She shivers.

"I don't know."

And like that -

 

\- we're just standing on the beach, and everything is fine.

Except Corina's face is tight, and her grip on my wrist is starting to cutoff circulation to my wrist, and it's clear that it is taking every scrap of self control she has not to run away from the water, the town, and me - and never look back.


	16. Chapter 16

No one was really into the mood to head out tonight. No one really even brought it up - it was just kind of understood that tensions were too high and people were too upset for any kind of group meeting.

That said, the prospect of sitting at home tonight was borderline nauseating, so I decided to head out myself. I had an appointment to keep.

I probably should've let Kuwat know I was coming before I started throwing rocks at his window, though.

_"Are you freakin' crazy!?"_ he hisses through the (now open) first-story window. I open my mouth to say _yeah, kind of_ , but before I do so he holds up a hand. After a deep breath, he says, in a slightly less pissed off but infinitely more resigned voice, "Why are you here, Safety?"

"I got bored," I say, kind of truthfully. "And you and I still need to talk." I hold up the bag in my hand. "And I brought some weed!" He lets out another sigh as I wave my hands through the air - "Look, are you going to let me in, or not? I'm kind of a sitting duck out here in the open."

He bites his lip. "Fine, fine. Just - hold on a sec."

Kuwat runs off to check outside his bedroom door, before tiptoeing back to the window and worming it open. It takes a little work to get up on the sill and get inside, and I'm sure that, if anyone's watching, it's not exactly the most _dignified_ scene. "Quiet," he mutters, as I land in a heap on his floor. "My parents are still up."

I blow a raspberry at him. "Dude, I don't think they really care about a girl sneaking into your room."

"I'm not worried about 'a girl' sneaking in my room," he deadpans, "it's _you_ they're not too excited about." Almost immediately, he winces - "Sorry, that came out wrong. Not that you aren't - they just really don't like you."

"I can't imagine why," I breeze.

I look around. Kuwat's room is kind of what I expected - sort of barebones, but not really _bleak_ ; there's a desk in the corner with what looks like a pretty decent computer on it, an assortment of textbooks and sci-fi novels, pens and pencils, scattered graph and lined paper. There's one book open - nothing I can understand, too many Greek letters and weird symbols - which is probably what he was looking at when I came in. Bed's in the corner; sheets are flat colors. The walls are decorated with a calendar, a couple of scientific posters, a baseball print that looks like it hasn't been touched since we were in elementary schools, a smattering of posters and prints of sci-fi scenery and the occasional scantily-clad woman - all to be expected.

Gently, Kuwat nudges a chair in front of his doorway. "Here," I say, as I lob the bag towards him. I try not to snicker too much as he scrambles to catch it, and only still myself when he shoots a _look_ my way.

"I'm not going to smoke in my parents' house, Safe," he says, tossing it back in my direction.

"Fine." I catch it handily, and throw it back to him just as easily. "Hang onto it. Smoke it yourself. Or," I say, leering at him, "you could smoke it with _Cooooriiiiiiinaaaaa."_

"Oh, god." He lands on his bed, shoulders slack. "That's why you're here."

I roll onto my stomach and prop my head up on my elbows. "C'mon, Kuwat. Let's talk about _giiiiirls."_

"Come on, Safe. Do you really want to talk about this now?" He shifts on the bed. "Especially after today?"

"Why not? No better time than now. Especially if there's a chance Petya's giant conspiracy could have us all killed in our sleep."

We both laugh, but there's an element of unease in it. Maybe a feeling that what little scraps of truth there _might_ be in the joke still hit a little too close to home. "So - seriously," I start, voice still easygoing, but without the forced mirth of before, "you and Corina, huh?"

Kuwat picks at his nails. "I know. It's absurd, right?"

"Actually, I was going to say the opposite." I tilt my head. "I mean, I'm not going to say I _expected_ it, but it makes a hell of a lot of sense to me. I think you guys would be cute."

"R-Really?" The hope in his voice evaporated slowly, as his eyelids lowered. "I... I don't know. I really don't - "

"Well, what's the problem? You like her, right?" The barest of nods. "Then - fucking _tell_ her, already! What are you waiting for?"

Kuwat makes a noise that might be "I..." but mostly sounds like a deeply ambiguous groan.

"I mean, you think she's pretty, right?" Nod. "She's funny and cool and smart?" Nod. "She's... well, she's kind of a wreck, but... that's not an issue, is it?" An emphatic no. "So..." I drop my voice low. "Is it... a trans thing - ?"

_"No!"_ he exclaims. His eyes dart to the door for a second - waiting for parents to catch wind of conversation and come storming in - but nothing happens. He fidgets again. "Not... really."

He doesn't elaborate. "I don't think I need to tell you that just because she's trans doesn't mean she's not a quote-unquote real girl - "

"I know, I know. That's not it. _And,"_ he says, "it's not a s-sex thing. I'm cool with all of that."

"Jumping the gun on that one a little bit, bud."

He frowns at me. And then at the floor. "But... I'm - I'm not gay."

I sigh. "Well," I say with as much patience as I can muster, "since Corina isn't a boy, I don't think that has to change - "

"That's not what I'm saying." He sighs again, and lays down on his bed to stare at the ceiling. "I... realized that I liked Corina, like - _three months ago_ , okay? Maybe four? And if it was just that, I'd be fine, but... the more I thought about it, the more I figured out that - maybe it just took me a while to _realize_ that I liked her. Maybe I've liked her for a lot longer than that.

"And maybe I've liked her for six months without knowing it. Or a year. Or two years - maybe I liked her before she was Corina. Maybe I liked her when she was still Harold, and instead of being a girl I snuck out with every night, she was still the guy sitting next to me that I'd probably have called my best friend, even if I hated her at the time because he was always better than me - " Pause. "She. Sorry."

"Okay," I concede, "maybe you're a little gay."

Kuwat is still facing the ceiling, but I can tell he's giving me the stink-eye. _"Or,"_ I continue, "maybe you just... liked Corina a lot as a best friend beforehand, and nothing would've ever come of it until she switched up her whole presentation. Or maybe it doesn't matter how she identified, because that just doesn't matter to you. Or maybe you could tell, even then, how she really felt, and you were attracted to that."

"Or maybe I'm a little gay," he breathes.

"Yeah, maybe. But - but so what? We're _all_ kind of gay, Kuwat, no one's going to think any worse of you - "

"No, Safe, that's - " Kuwat rolls over to the edge of his bed to stare me down. "You don't get it, okay? Yeah, _everyone's gay._ I'm not worried about what anyone in the group is going to say. It's everyone _else._ People on the street, potential employers, my _parents_ \- oh, god, my parents - I know you guys have all just given up, but I want to _do something_ with my life." Kuwat turns, back to me, to face the wall. "And I can't do that if I have to keep looking over my shoulder."

The room is quiet.

I fiddle with the drawstring of my hoodie, picking off the little hard plastic casing on the end of it. "...Do - do you really think that about me?" I manage to mutter. "That I've just given up?"

There's a pause. "You talk about how shitty things are here all the time, Safe, but what are you doing about it? Are you trying to leave? Make things better here?" He finishes, voice heavy, "Are you going to tell me you haven't given up?"

"I mean," I protest, "I want to fix things, but - " And I stop. Think about it. And respond with just as much weight, "No. I guess not."

He doesn't press the issue, and I don't have any other responses. Outside, distant, I hear bird calls - herons, out on the marsh. Sometimes - in the summer, in the spring, when it's warmer out - we get mockingbirds out there, flitting around, looking for purchase, and just spilling out their songs for hours on end. It's cold out now, though, and the only birds that haven't headed south for the winter are the handful of herons still hanging on, stabbing around in the muck for whatever they can find and screeching out across the expanse towards town. I doubt we have more than a couple weeks before they disappear, too, and the only birds that'll be left around town are the rare finches that head across the marsh to try and find scraps in the streets.

"I really wish you'd let me smoke that weed," I croak.

Kuwat snorts. He nods towards his desk. "Bottom drawer, behind the binders."

I cock an eyebrow at him, but he's still looking in the other direction. I pull the drawer out and flip past binders (most of them empty; some of them marked with subjects and years - English '14, Geometry '13) to find a mess of miscellaneous bits and pieces - broken pencils, abandoned erasers, bent paperclips and staples, busted chargers and frayed wires, boxes for old games and accompanying instruction manuals - "You might have to dig a bit," he says - and, at the bottom of it all, a little off-white bottle.

I pop off the top and look inside. Little orange pills. "Are you _using?_ What the hell is this stuff?"

He finally rolls over and cracks a grin at me. "THC pills."

It takes a couple of blinks before I can talk. "You're kidding me."

Kuwat reaches out an open palm. "One, please."

I let out a cackle - and, remembering his parents, stifle it as best as I can - and pour out a few into my hand. I pass one his way. "Start with one," he says as he reaches for a water bottle on his bedside table. "It hits a little heavier than you think."

"I could do with heavy right now."

_"Safety."_

"Fine, fine." I swallow one and pour the remainder back into the bottle, before carefully slipping the bottle back into it's hiding place. "I can't believe you just _have_ these."

"We all have our vices," he muses. "I just prefer something a little more low profile than the rest of you guys."

"Pfft. Where did you even - ?"

"Petya knows a guy."

"Of course they do." I feel like Petya probably supplies half the people I know at this point. Alcohol, swiped from work at the bar, and now pills from A Guy They Know. "How long are these - ?"

"A while. Just chill."

"Okay." Kuwat passes me a water bottle, and I take a sip. "...If you don't want to talk about it any more, we don't have to, but if you still want to try and talk about Corina..."

"Mmm." He goes back to picking at his nails. "I don't know. I just need to think about it a while. ...Would you even be okay with that? With us?"

I turn towards him, confusion clear on my face. "What? Why wouldn't I be?"

"Because, you know. You and Corina."

"What about me and Corina?"

He props himself up on one elbow to look at me. "...Are you not like, into her?"

I look at him like he has three heads. "Are you fucking _kidding_ me? No, we aren't - no, of course not. Why would you even _think_ that?"

"Sorry, sorry." He raises his hands defensively. "I guess I just misread the vibe. So, to be clear - you _definitely_ don't have a crush on her, right?"

"Right. I - " I stop, halfway through my denial, and give the question a bit more thought than I had my first time through. It only takes a few seconds, but I definitely come to some conclusions I hadn't before. "I... I guess that if, for example, Corina asked me out, I wouldn't say _no - "_

"Oh, hell," he groaned. "There I go, upping the competition."

I can't help it - I start giggling. It's not even the pills kicking in, it's just the complete absurdity of the situation, and at some point, Kuwat joins in. "Look," I say, once I've regained control of myself, "so - maybe there's a little something there. But seriously, don't let me stop you - just _go for it_ , dude. God knows I have other crushes in the way."

"Right," he says. "I forgot about you and Hunter. A romance to last the ages, I'm sure."

"Shut up. I just spent like, fifteen minutes telling you to be a little optimistic for once."

"Fine." He lets out a quiet huff. "Seriously, though, what's the deal with that? Why...?"

I laugh. "Dude, it's not like I have the tortured fuckin' backstory that you have. She's really nice and seems pretty funny and she's hot. Sometimes that's all it takes."

"I guess."

"Plus, she was the Cool Older Girl for basically the entirety of middle and high school, so - "

"Yeah, I get it, I get it."

I fidget around on the floor. "Hey, can I steal a pillow or something? Your floor kind of sucks."

There's some motion on the bed. I pull myself up into a sitting position so I can actually see what's going on, and Kuwat's made some room. "Thaaaank youuuuu," I half-groan half-sing as I scramble onto the spot next to him. The bed is comfortable - _way_ too soft to sleep on, as far as I'm concerned, but right now it does the trick. It takes a little more fidgeting until we both have enough room to actually lie down comfortably.

"Corina's so cool," Kuwat finally mutters. I nod my agreement.

"I gotta say, if you were looking for trans childhood friends to crush on, I'm a little offended you didn't come to me first. I have _way_ lower standards that Corina."

He clicks his tongue. "Yeah, but she was trans first."

"Ouch."

"Besides," he says, "I always knew you were into Hunter, and I thought you and Corina were both pretty into each other. I didn't even know you were an, uh, option."

"An _option?"_

"Sorry. That sounds bad. You know what I mean."

I pause. "...And now that I am? An 'option?'"

Kuwat turns to look at me. "...Huh."

I cock my head at him. "Hey," I chuckle, "you wanted to know if you're gay, and I'm _basically_ still a boy."

"Come on. Don't do that to yourself."

I smirk. "That's not really an answer."

Kuwat closes his eyes and hums quietly. "We'll see how gay I feel when these _fucking pills_ kick in."

I laugh - and then he laughs - and then my head is pressed into his chest, both of us laughing or crying or somewhere in between, and right now, that's okay.


	17. Chapter 17

_I wake up on Kuwat's bed. Alone._

_His desk lamp is still on. They cast a low, red tone over the room, sweeping through the shadows intermittently. Something flutters across the light and disappears. Each movement of the light throws long shadows against the wall, like Pollock in the studio._

_Every window has a box fan, blowing out. Too dark outside to see._

_It's warm in here._

_I stand up._

_There are two inches of seawater covering the floor of Kuwat's bedroom._

_I walk to the door and move the chair aside. I open it, and step into a long hallway. I turn right and begin to walk. The water is slightly deeper here. Everything reeks of salt. Before long, the noise of the fans has faded, and even though I don't bother to confirm, I'm sure that if I turned around, Kuwat's room would be too far back for_ ~~ _us_ ~~ _me to see._

_For me to see._

_For me to see._

_Mold begins to crawl up the walls as I walk. Slowly, at first, a steady creeping of rot - but soon, it is crawling in earnest, color blossoming and spreading upwards from the water until the wallpaper is obscured behind bruises. I think the rot is following me. Or maybe I'm bringing it with me. There are no lights in here - not ahead or behind - but I can still see everything around me with perfect clarity. The walls. The rot. Framed photographs on the wall, each of them of different families, faces always obscured, in memoriam. The water._

_Bones in the water._

_Maybe bones is wrong. Not skeletons. Not that I recognize. More like osseous sculptures, done by a blindfolded man. Where the individual ridges and crests and knuckles and joints might all make sense, but taken as a whole, they're nothing more than twisting, serpentine chains of bone, knotted along the baseboards and spiraling up out of the water._

_And now, moving._

_Speaking._

_Asking._

_"What are you doing to fix it, Safety?"_


	18. Chapter 18

I wake up on Kuwat's bed. Not alone.

Waking up from nightmares is a tricky thing. Sometimes you really do get that Hollywood lurch back into consciousness, complete with sitting straight up, wide-eyed and sweating and screaming - most of the time, though, that journey back into the waking world is slower and more torturous than waking up from any happy dream; the last frame of my terror stretched out into a blurring, messy texture of colors and sensations that's lost all meaning by the time I open my eyes. Save, that is, for the faintest echo of anxiety.

Though that just might be because I'm off my meds.

I blink myself awake, wincing at the rays of sunlight stabbing through the window. Orange. Hard to tell what time it is, and I can't see a clock from where I'm laying.

I'm laying, it seems, partially under Kuwat. Still on the same side of the bed I fell asleep on, but he managed to roll over and land half on me. Part of me kind of wants to just lay there for a while and relish that moment of human contact, to enjoy the feeling of a late, lazy morning - or afternoon, maybe - with someone ~~I like~~ that doesn't drive me up the fucking wall, but -

But.

I (gently) try to pull myself up into a sitting position, but there's no possible way for me to pull that off without moving Kuwat. He lets out a groan in the process and rolls back over - off of me - so he's face down, right up against the wall. I smack my lips, trying to clear the taste of sleep out of my mouth (no repeats of last night until I get my teeth brushed), while Kuwat tries to rouse himself next to me. Mostly unsuccessfully. There's a lot of shuffling around and grumbling, but the end result is still him with his head buried in a pillow.

"What time is it?" he managed to mumble.

I squint outside at the light. I can't _really_ tell the sun's position from here, but I know it's sitting just above the edge of the ocean. "I - _ahem."_ My throat isn't exactly loving me right now. "I dunno. 8 AM or 2 PM, probably. Sun's at the horizon."

~~ I can't remember the last time the sun made it to the middle of the sky. ~~

I swing my legs off the bed and stand up to stretch as Kuwat finally pulls himself up behind me. I almost make a crack about how godawful his hair looks, but I figure I'm probably living in a glass house right now. My clothes feel awful, and it takes a moment to just reorient and reposition everything I have on - they've got that day-old feeling, where all of the little accumulated folds and creases I wore to bed last night spent seven or eight or however many hours making themselves at home, and they have too much memory to sort themselves out now that I'm awake.

Now that I'm up, though, I should probably -

"Are you leaving?"

I turn back to the bed. Kuwat is very clearly still working on getting the sleep out of his mouth and the folds out of his clothes, but he's got an expression that isn't even really confused - it's still a level of cognition below confusion that only the newly-awoken can really pull off. "Yeah," I say, "I think so. I need to take my meds, shower, shave, brush my teeth - you know."

"Oh. Um. Okay."

I raise an eyebrow at him. "... _Is_ that okay?"

He fidgets some more. "I just - you know, after last night, if you maybe wanted to talk - "

"Oh. _Oh._ Shit, dude, it's not like I'm pulling off a walk of shame here or something." I rub at the back of my head. "Not that we really did anything that warrants that, anyways."

"Oh," he says, in a slightly more confident tone. "Good. For what it's worth, I - thanks. For talking, and... stuff."

"Right. _And stuff,"_ I snicker. "Hey, any time. That's what friends are for." I fish my phone out of my pocket and glance at the screen. _8:55 AM._ A couple of missed messages, emails, etc. One from Corina.

I read it and laugh. "Hey," I say, "Corina wants to get lunch. You in?"

He blinks at me, like he's not really sure if I'm serious or not. "Uh, yeah. Yeah, sure, just let me - let me get cleaned up and shit - "

"Chill, dude. I'll tell her to meet us at noon. No rush."

I slip my phone back in my pocket and look out the window. "All right, I should probably get moving."

I make for the window when Kuwat stops me. "Hey, um... Safe? Can we - keep all this between us?" He pauses. "Both like, last night and what we talked about?"

I give him a lazy thumbs up as I open the window. "Can do. And you might want to hide that sooner rather than later," I say, pointing to the bag of weed still in plain sight on his table, before I slip out the window and back up the hill.

 

"What do you mean they aren't returning your calls?"

Corina sips from a coffee cup that she's augmented with something in a flask, before replacing it in it's spot among the disarray of our past-tense lunch. "I mean exactly that. I sent Petya a few messages yesterday - after you and I... talked," she says with the slightest hesitation, gesturing to me, "you know, trying to play peacekeeper or something, and they never got back to me."

"I mean," Kuwat says, "that's not really too surprising. I don't think anyone was really in a mood to talk after yesterday."

I snort. Corina and Kuwat both shoot me looks - different looks, mind you, but looks all the same. Corina continues, "I guess. But I tried calling them this morning, too, and they still wouldn't pick up. That's... weird, right? I mean, I get ignoring texts, but screening your calls - ?"

"I'm sure it's nothing," I breeze. "Petya's kind of like that."

"...Yeah." She leans back against the seat. "I'm still a little worried, is all."

"It'll be fine," Kuwat says. "Seriously, Petya's kind of an idiot sometimes, but they have a good head on their shoulders. They're just angry and scared, and are cutting themselves off from everyone until they cool down a bit and come to their senses." He sips from a coffee cup that hasn't been augmented with anything. "They'll be back to normal by tomorrow, I'm sure."

"I thought you believed them," Corina says.

Kuwat pauses, mid-sip. "I'm trying not to think about it too much," he sighs.

"Lot of that going around," I mutter. Both of them shoot me looks again. "Hey, I'm not calling anyone out. God knows I'm trying not to think about it," I mutter. Not that I've been particularly successful - with the exception of the time that I spent with Kuwat, most of my mental processing has been occupied trying to suppress glimpses of James Alvarez, staring out of the folds of my gray matter.

I would give a lot to never see that face again.

"Well, if Claudette's right, we'll never have to," Corina mutters.

"...Have you seen _her?"_ Kuwat asks. "Or Rachel, or - "

"Yeah, yeah. I've seen all of them. Well, I saw Rachel and Hunter on my way over. They were - " she shoots a glance at me out of the corner of her eyes. "...Being mushy. And I haven't laid eyes on Claudette, but I talked to her last night, and she's fine." She chuckles bitterly. "Still a little whipped up, but what the fuck else is new?"

"Mm." I reach for the last cold, crunchy, salt-encrusted fry bits at the bottom of our otherwise empty basket. "Any chance people are going to want to head out tonight?"

Kuwat and Corina both shrug without a lot of enthusiasm. "I don't know, Safe," Kuwat says. "After last night, I don't really feel like shooting the shit out in the cold for a few hours."

Corina looks up. "Why? What happened last night?"

I keep my lips tight and look at Kuwat expectantly. "Uh. I mean - " he stammers out - "you know, because last night was very... draining emotionally, and stressful, because, um, the - uh - Alvarez thing, and everyone was yelling, and, you know, we didn't get to go, uh, go out and - you know - talk about things, and - I - I don't do very well with, um, you know, stresso-or competition - "

"You're like the most competitive dude I know," Corina says.

"H- _HEY_ , I've got a great idea. How about I pay for lunch? _HEY, W-WAITER,"_ Kuwat yells across the diner, before practically vaulting out of his seat and towards the cash register.

Corina turns to me, brows arched. I just give her a small smile and whisper/mouth back at her, "Stress. You know."

 

I try not to think about it, I try to focus on the conversation, try to focus on the rhythm of our shoes on concrete and the way Corina keeps slipping questions about 'Last Night' into her conversation with Kuwat and the ever-present beads of sweat on his forehead -

But I can't help myself, and when Kuwat and Corina step into the bar to see if Petya's on duty, I make an excuse and I cross the three hundred feet or so to the edge of the water.

 

For the first time in months, the ocean is silent.


	19. Chapter 19

Petya wasn't at the bar.

Their dad was. He said he wasn't sure where Petya was, but not to worry too much about it - sometimes they just left for a day or three without telling anyone beforehand. He didn't sound happy about that, but he didn't sound concerned, either.

I realize, now, that I don't really know much of anything about Petya.

Their father's reassurances feel bittersweet, though. Maybe that's not really the right expression. As much as I wanted to believe him, there's still this taste in the back of my mouth that won't quite leave. It's heavy. Faintly metallic - not the copper tinge of blood; it feels like the weight of a cold spoon left in my mouth. One of those mostly tasteless things that we just sort of normalize away with time. I feel less certain about the entire situation now than I did this morning.

Still, though. What can we do?

Even with the faint pallor of uncertainty hanging overhead, the three of us spent a chunk of the day together. Away from the water, and away from the marsh, which mostly meant we ended up walking back to the diner and shooting the shit in there for most of the afternoon. Peoplewatching. Guessing at who was having affairs with who. Mocking tourists' unfortunate fashion choices. Bitching about the news (again, headed up mostly by Kuwat).

It was a pretty good day.

Sun's down now, though. Day's over. I'm back home.

I have the house to myself right now. Mom's out doing something 'important.' Town council stuff. I have to be honest - she's been on the council for literally my entire life, and I still don't know what she actually _does_ for them. Probably, like... zoning laws, or some other boring shit. The only time I ever see her 'work' is when she's schmoozing with the mayor, or the police, or other council members in the living room. Not exactly inspiring stuff.

I'm still holed up in my room, though. We don't really have a ton of room in the first place - but even with the house empty, I'd rather be in here than in the living room. Feels safer in here, somehow. Window's cracked open - rain's going to start falling any second, now, and I'd like to be able to listen to it. Cold be damned. I'm on my bed; tape's playing on the small machine on my desk. I have Petya to thank for that, actually - they were the one who got me into tape, for some fucking reason.

Tonight's little stack of cassettes includes:

 

    * _The Best of Pearl Jam, vol.5_ (yes, _five_ (it's garbage))
    * The Beatles - _Help!_ (completely torn to shit; about one play away from falling apart, which is the only reason it's worth listening to)
    * An unlabeled James Blake live recording
    * Boards of Canada - _Tomorrow's Harvest_ (recorded from CD to tape, thank you very much)
    * Two Mystery Tapes that Petya gave me a couple weeks ago; one is a singer-songwriter-y Sad Boy With Guitar thing that is pretty mediocre, and one that - I _think_ , I'm not totally sure - might be Carly Rae Jepsen's _E•MO•TION_ run through a mountain of processing until all that's left is a pile of vaguely tonal noise.



 

(Most of them are first or second listens.)

I like tape, I think. A lot of what I have is cheap shit I get passed second or thirdhand - a lot of it from Petya; some of it from Corina - which is always a plus when your budget is as small as mine is. And the sound is great - by which I mean it's usually very bad, which I kind of love, especially on some of these recordings that are mixed pretty terribly so there's more distortion than there is music -

Mostly, though, there's something about the way that they get passed around; they're so cheap that Petya and Corina can _afford_ to give me shit, even if it's something original, like a goofy mixtape or a drunken rendition of Happy Birthday or some one-off live recording from an act that stopped in at the bar - that whole cheap to make, cheap to share thing is true of CDs and digital stuff, sure, but something about being able to hold this little thing of plastic and tape and say _this is mine_ \- _this is mine and it was made for me_ is kind of powerful.

 

There is a click outside my door.

I look up from my phone. 

My door's ajar, slightly, but the lights are still off outside. The music is loud, but not loud enough that I wouldn't have heard Mom coming home. It's probably nothing, but I have nothing to gain from just sitting on my couch. I stand up, pocketing my phone. 

The tape's still playing. A sickly falsetto follows me out of my room.

The hallway's dark, and still empty. 

I keep walking - directly across the hallway, and into the bathroom. 

Still, there's no one here - stranger or not. 

I turn the light on. They have to flicker a moment - and then they hum to life. Pale white light fills the room. 

Things feel a little green in here. 

I walk over to the bathtub. 

It is clean.

I turn the faucet, and seawater begins to pour out, and I know that _something is wrong here._

_The water continues to flow._

_If the smell of the salt was strong before, it is overpowering now. Nauseating. It is more intense than should be possible. I want to retch._

_And it only gets worse._

_The water fills half of the tub. Nothing marks it as seawater besides the smell - it is clear of debris, animals, kelp - but I can tell._

_It mumbles like seawater does._

_I want to dunk my head into it, but I know that if I do, the Thing inside it will kill me._

_I think I want it to._

_The house around me shrieks and groans. Not with the tortured scraping of old pipes, or the hoarse creaks of wood settling under the weight of plaster and living, but with voice and song. A chorus of death, swelling to a thousand strong, each of them only capable of a single syllable, but shared between them is speech - telling me, begging me, praying to me to swim._

_Just not here._

_And there, underneath and on top of it all, the hum, shaking the foundations, the world, the tub, me -_

_And I'm falling forward, head first into the water, jaws surging out of it to meet me -_

 

And I'm in bed.

The lights are on, and the tape deck has stopped playing. I guess it probably stopped playing a while ago. My bedside clock says it's a couple hours later - I guess I fell asleep, and I know instantly that this is a lie.

I don't know how or why - I try to shove it down, justify it as a day of uneven medication and sips from Corina's flask and good old paranoia - but I know that this truth that I am standing in, of an errant nightmare that I've woken up out of, is a lie.

And the more that solidifies itself, the louder the hum gets.


	20. Chapter 20

I don't mention last night to anyone.

I don't even know what I'd say, to be honest.

The hum was gone when I woke up this morning. The sun is shining. Finches are still flitting around outside. People are walking on the streets. The bathtub's clean -no sign of seawater or monsters.

It's almost like it was all in my head.

_(Ha, ha.)_

(Sarcasm aside - I'd be lying if I said I wasn't terrified. Either what happened last night was all in my head, in which case I'm having trouble telling the difference between dreams and reality - not a great prospect - or it was real, in which case...)

(I don't know. What do you even do about something like that?)

More pressing things are at hand, anyways.

 

"I think Petya got themselves arrested," Claudette says.

Reactions to this are mixed.

We're, once again, all gathered in Claudette's garage around a card table with a wobbly leg and more red wine stains than I can count. She called this meeting - told us that she had heard some rumors - and I don't think any of us really knew what to expect walking in. Maybe something about Alvarez. Probably not this.

She doesn't look too good, either. Like she's been having some sleepless nights lately. Not that any of us look _great_ right now - I don't even want to think about how _I_ look - but Claudette is usually super put together, even on her days off. She's always exuded this degree of professionalism that none of us can even hope to aspire to - the ideal of every professional American woman - but right now, though, she looks... haggard. And worried.

"Wait, wait, wait," Hunter says, "don't just - you can't just drop that on us without any preamble. What _exactly_ did you hear?"

(Hunter, of course, still looks fantastic.)

Claudette sets her bag down (on a chair, away from the streaks of burgundy on the table) and takes a seat. "I've been hearing some rumors," she starts. "Less juicy than usual. Apparently, someone got caught trying to sneak into the police station the night before last. They've been in lockup ever since."

She stops, and looks around the circle. "That _does_ sound like Petya," Corina muses.

Hunter shakes their head. "But you don't _know_ that it is. I mean - it wouldn't surprise me if they decided to do something stupid like that, but just because it seems like something they'd do - "

"But we don't know that it _isn't_ him, either," Rachel interjects.

I bark out a short laugh. "So basically, we still don't know anything. Someone is maybe at the police station that maybe tried to sneak in and maybe is still in lockup, and it might be Petya."

"Has anyone spoken to them since the meeting?" Kuwat asks.

No one has.

Kuwat shrugs. "Well..."

Hunter fidgets. Hesitantly, they ask, "Has anyone gone down to the station and just _asked?"_

"I have." Claudette smooths out her skirt nervously. "They pretty much flat-out refused to say anything. 'It's policy not to comment on ongoing investigations or held suspects.' They wouldn't even confirm if there _was_ an ongoing investigation." She picks her bag back up, and stands to leave - meeting over, I guess. "Look, I'm going to poke around a bit more - there's a council meeting tonight, and I'm pretty sure I can get _someone_ to talk - but I just felt like everyone should know, just in case it _is_ Petya. I didn't want anyone to learn about it secondhand from someone else - "

"We should break into the police station," I say. I look around at the group. "Right? That's our next step?"

Corina looks like she's in favor of the idea (just on principle, probably). Kuwat looks skeptical. Hunter and Claudette are dumbfounded, and Rachel's face is... unreadable.

"You're fucking kidding me," Claudette deadpans. I shrug. "Safety, that might be the stupidest idea I've ever heard. Why - " she pinches the bridge of her nose. "Why. Why?"

"Makes sense to me," Kuwat muses. "If they won't tell us what's going on themselves, then we have to - "

_"Stop._ Just. Stop." Claudette puts her head in her hands. "You guys are _insane_. If Petya just got _got_ for trying to sneak in, then why would you...?"

No one really responds. With the exception of Hunter, everyone just gives her this shared expectant look of _really?_ She looks around the circle, hoping for agreement, and finds a whole lot of nothing. "Alright," she says, standing up abruptly. "I'm not going to rat on any of you, but I won't be a part of this." She walks to the door. "My lunch break's almost over, anyways. I expect you all to be out of here when I'm done with work." And then she's gone.

Momentarily, everyone watches her go - listens for the slam of the front door - and then we immediately get back into it. "So who's going in?" Kuwat says. "Anyone want to volunteer?"

"I'll do it," I say. "Mom's on the council. If I get caught, I'll get a ration of shit from her, but they're not going to throw the book at me for poking around."

"I'll go with you," Rachel says.

I turn to her. I _really_ don't want to spend an extended amount of time alone with Rachel. "I don't know, Rache - " she _hates_ that - "this is kind of a one-girl job, you know?"

She shakes her head. "If Petya was right, and the cops are involved, you might need backup. And if things go _really_ bad..." She gestures around the remaining group. "It's not like any of _you_ guys can take a punch."

Dejected murmurs of agreement abound.

I bite my lip. She has a point. "...Fine. We'll go." I wince slightly. "Together."

Either Rachel can't tell how I feel about her, or she _really_ doesn't care, because her only response is a smile and a nod. "Alright, we should do this as soon as we can. How are we going to get - "

Hunter throws up their hands. "I'm sorry, guys - Claudette was right. This is _stupid."_ They turn to Rachel, pleading - _"Please_ , Rachel, don't do this. This is suicide, just - don't throw your life away on a _hunch."_

Rachel cups her face. "I'm sorry, babe, but - I can't risk being wrong on this. If Petya's really in trouble - I mean _really_ in trouble, and I don't try to help them..."

Hunter doesn't respond. They just step back and hang their head. Rachel stares at her, then mutters, "Come on, Safe," and heads out the door.

I follow.

 

Chapel Bay's police station is larger than you'd expect.

Mostly, though, it's storage for the patrollers - this wide, nearly featureless hangar-like structure on the south side of the station. The station proper is about what you'd expect - a service desk, a handful of what are basically offices, and holding cells for the drunk and/or disorderly. It's not a very pleasant place to be, whether you're locked up or not - I've been both - it has this overwhelmingly drab, borderline oppressive feel, replete with half-broken fluorescent lights and a smell that is almost recognizable as something _bad_ , but evades categorization just enough to impart a sense of unease.

We're still outside. Across the street, sitting on the sidewalk - having a perfectly innocent conversation that is just as awkward and stilted as you might expect. I'm not sure what we're doing _here_ , to be honest - I'm following Rachel's lead right now, and keeping an eye on the station whenever I'm not looking at Rachel or my phone. Watching for gaps, I guess.

My phone isn't even on right now. I'm just staring at a black screen.

"You okay?" Rachel asks. "Anxiety-wise?"

_No._ "Yes. Don't worry about it."

Rachel nods. "Good. Don't need you freaking out on me in there."

I glance down at Rachel's phone when she looks up to wave at a passing car. She's got some messaging app open - a conversation with Hunter. Well, less of a conversation, and more of a sequence of apologies and pleas. "Trouble in paradise?" I scoff.

"Hmm?" She looks back at me. "Oh. Yeah, I guess." She taps her nails on the pavement (deep blue). "They'll come around. I hope."

I hum. It's kind of hard not to feel a little schadenfreude at that.

"Speaking of which, Safe, we need to talk."

Ah.

"I don't really think we do, Rachel." I make a point out of actually turning my phone on this time and (frantically) finding something else to pay attention to.

"Yes, we do." She hesitates. "I know you like Hunter."

"Who told you that?"

She gives me a flat look. "My fucking eyes, Safe. _Everyone_ knows." Another hesitation. "...Except Hunter, maybe. I haven't talked to them about it."

"...Fine. You got me," I grumble. "I like Hunter. Is that a problem?"

_"No!"_ Both of us recoil a little bit at the outburst. She reaches up to smooth out her hair a bit, and continues, "I mean - of course not. How could you _not_ like Hunter? They're great, I just - I feel like your... crush, or whatever you want to call it, is getting in the way of _our_ relationship."

I look away. "I'm sure that's not tru-"

_"Yeah, it is."_ She huffs, brows furrowed slightly - "I'm not _blind_ , Safe. If I can see that you're crushing on Hunter, I can tell see that you're pissed off at me. Ever since I started dating Hunter, you've been - been short with me, you don't want to hang out, or talk, or even _look_ at me - you aren't looking at me _now!"_

I turn back to her, indignation burning the back of my throat. "Well, what do you _want_ out of me, Rachel? _Huh?"_

_"I want you to_ like _me again!"_

Both of us stop, breathing heavy. She continues again, her voice softer - more hurt - "Damn, Safe, you're - you're my _friend._ A _good_ friend - at least, I thought we were friends - and I just want to know what I can do to, you know, _fix_ this."

I look up at her. "Besides breaking up with Hunter?"

_"Yes, Safety."_

I snicker, and catch myself. "Sorry, I - ah, shit." Phone goes back in my pocket, and I try to speak sincerely, for a change. "You - you don't have to do anything, okay? This is just me being a fucking dumbass." I swallow. "I _know_ it's not fair of me to take this out on you, I'm just... a moron."

She snorts. "Your words, not mine." She reaches up and rubs at her face - her eyes, briefly - "I know I can't _make_ you like me, Safety, but I just wish you didn't _hate_ me."

"I-I don't hate you!" I exclaim. "I just - " Hesitantly, I reach out and put a hand on Rachel's arm. "Look, this is... this is all on me. If you _really_ want to talk about this later, I'm not going to say no, but _I'm_ the one that has to change here, okay?" I bite my lip. "And I will. I promise you, I'll stop being such a fucking _prick_ all the time."

She looks at me deadpan for half a second, before exploding into a single short bark of laughter. "I'll hold you to that," she says. "Look, I do want to talk shit out a bit - you know, just one on one. Sometime over the weekend, okay? We'll go find an empty patch of beach somewhere and smoke our feelings out. Sound good?"

"...Yeah. That sounds nice," I say, which isn't totally true, but she's right - we're probably better off talking things out. Not that I wouldn't prefer just letting bygones be bygones and never talk about this again, but I know Rachel, and she's not going to back down on this.

"As long as we don't get ourselves locked up first," she finishes.

I look back across the street. I had kind of forgotten what we were out here to do in the first place. "So... what's the plan here, anyways? Are we waiting for someone to leave? Do you have a distraction planned? How are we getting in?"

"Well, Safe, I'm glad you asked." Rachel stands up and dusts herself off. "So, here's the plan..."


	21. Chapter 21

I almost feel bad for the guy at the front desk.

"Look, I'm sorry, Mr. Mackenna - "

"Miss. It's Miss."

" - but I haven't heard _anything_ about the Councilwoman swinging by. I don't know what she told you, but - "

I lean forward across the counter, easily slipping into the most entitled my-happiness-is-more-important-than-your-job expression. "My mom _told_ me that I was supposed to meet her here before her talk with the Chief. Let me make this clear - I'm here now. My mother is going to be here in the next fifteen minutes. And if she gets here," I say, leaning even farther forward and just barely resisting the urge to grab the guy by his tie, "and I tell her that the asshole at the front desk made me wait in the lobby instead of finding me a nice chair and a quiet room to sit in, _someone_ is going to get in trouble. And I don't think it's going to be me."

The man swallows. "R-right this way, Ms. Mackenna."

I wait until he's turned away from me before I let out a sigh. This is a stupid plan, to be sure, but I'm lucky that _whatever_ it is my mom actually does, she scares the shit out of the people around here. It's not perfect - there's always the risk she actually _will_ swing by the station, which is going to be tricky to explain, or that once I've cut and run, word of this little excursion will find it's way back to her - but those are problems for Future Safety to figure out. Right now, I just need to make sure I'm left alone and I can get to the back door.

The man - whose name I did not and do not want to learn - leads me back through the small, dense network of hallways, desks, and offices that make up the station proper. It's just like I remember it - completely and utterly banal in a way that's almost a little unnerving. I'd almost feel more comfortable in a CSI-esque surveillance state command room.

The room he drops me off in is near the back - right where I was hoping to land - but otherwise unremarkable. Like most of the station, it's kind of shitty, but passable. I wait for the man to leave and listen for his footsteps as he retreats back to the front desk, before - with a quick glance up and down the hallway - I slip out.

The back entrance of the station is only a couple doorways down, and opens easily at my touch. Rachel slips in through the crack in the door, mouth still tightly drawn. No time for talking.

Making our way to the holding cells is a tense sequence of hugging corners, ducking into empty meeting rooms, listening constantly for anyone approaching - but at the end of the day, we manage to get to our destination without any trouble. The cells aren't built for holding more than one person at once - they're rooms, actually, more like individual cells in a maximum-security prison; built for single occupancy with these heavy, super-secured doors, and bulletproof glass windows with tiny little gaps to let speech through. There are cots in the corner, toilets and sinks in each, and -

They're all empty.

"Shit," Rachel breathes. "So much for that."

"I'm not so sure," I mutter. I'm itching to get out of here as soon as possible - I have my breathing under control, for now, though I'm not sure how long that's going to last - but there's something that doesn't feel right about this. "There should at least be _someone_ here. Right?" I turn to Rachel. "Claudette said she wasn't sure if it was Petya that got _got_ , but she seemed pretty certain that _someone_ had broken in."

Rachel nods. "Then, where...?"

I glance back down the way we came. "Come on. I want to take a look at the interrogation rooms."

Rachel follows. Still, we don't see anyone - which I'm not complaining about, but still feels a little off, all the same. I walked in here with a sort of fatalism about _probably_ getting caught somewhere along the way, but now that we're actually doing this and we haven't seen or heard anything besides footsteps, unease is starting to set in. Chapel Bay has a _lot_ of cops - not surprising when your two main career choices are finding a spot on a fishing boat or joining the police - so where _is_ everyone?

There are four rooms on our right, clearly marked as interrogation rooms and adjoining observation rooms. I knock on the first one, wait briefly for a response, and then slowly nudge it open when I get nothing but silence. I glance at Rachel, to make sure she's keeping watch - she is, of course - and then I stick my head inside.

Again, empty; again, no surprises. Four walls, four chairs, and a table.

I pull it closed, taking care not to let to latch click too loudly. Next one.

Shuffle down the hall. Knock. No response, open.

I see stairs. Downwards.

And then, with a blink, they're gone, and I'm just left staring at an empty room - the mirror image of the one I just checked.

I shake my head, trying to clear things out. Anxiety's getting the best of me again. I need to get out of here before things get worse. "Come on," I mutter to Rachel. "This was a waste of time. Let's go."

Rachel nods again, and we beat a hasty retreat back to the exit I originally let her in through. Until she stops me again - grabs me by my sleeve and pulls me back down the hallway, and then into an ajar supply closet, hand pressed against my mouth, door closed behind us -

_"Rachel!_ What the - "

_"Shh!!"_ Even in the dark, I can see her hold a finger up to her lips and then point towards the door. I stop, and sure enough - there're people coming down the hallway. Two people, it sounds like - women, maybe - talking in hushed tones. I can only hear snippets of their conversation, muffled by the door, but Rachel's already digging her phone out of her pocket and recording everything. As they get closer, we can hear:

"...........they shouldn't worry................is.............be fine."

"...don't know..........................buy......anymore."

"..............buy? Everything _will_....... "

_"Stuff it._ You know........bullshit............................................................poke around.....................benefactors are getting.............................this _now."_

I turn to Rachel. _"Benefactors?"_ She looks just as lost as I do. The voices continue:

".....not that big a deal. We've dealt with....................."

"................going to.......this time. My contact.............................less than a....................state........drop in.........full......................... "

"And..........................to find? ..................talk? _You?"_

"...........................I'd never - "

".................. _fuck up_ , and..............my job."

"..............................the boy?"

".............usual. Go with.........Maybe........No - stick with the razors........ fucking mess................................................................................own conclusions. We don't...............................overplay..............."

"......then?"

"Break..................useful."

And with that, they're gone.

There's a long moment in that dark, cluttered closet where neither of us is sure what to say. I think I say, "Were they talking about - ?"

Even in the dark, I can still see Rachel shake her head in the negative. "Not now," she whispers. "Let's get out of here, first."


	22. Chapter 22

Talking about what we heard can wait for later. At night, in the marsh, away from prying eyes.

Now, though:

Now I am sitting in my room, staring at the doorway, where my mom is trying to give me some bad news.

"I'm so sorry," she says. "It's - it's Petya Hagebak."

I blink at her, uncomprehending. "What about them?"

For a moment, it looks like she's about to walk into my room and sit down on the bed - but she hesitates, and opts to stay where she is. "He's missing."

"They," I correct, absently - "I - I know. They haven't been around for a few days."

"Well, his father hasn't heard from him at all, and he went to the police today. And..." She bites her lip. "They searched his room. And they found something."

Breathe in. Breathe out. "What?" I ask, though I'm pretty sure I already know the answer.

"Something bad. I don't want to say - "

_"What, Mom."_

She looks me dead in the eyes. "Razors. And blood. _Fresh_ blood _."_

My own runs cold. She continues, "They aren't certain about anything - they're still looking for him - but... it doesn't look good, hon. He's been missing, Mr. Hagebak says he's been drinking a _lot_ , he's been... _hurting_ himself - they think - "

"I got it, Mom," I mutter. "I got it."

She steps forward. "They're still looking, but if he went out in the marsh to - "

_"I got it."_

She steps back. "...Okay." After a tense pause, she ventures, "I know this can't be easy, but if you ever want to talk - "

"I'd just like to be alone for a bit."

"...Alright." She throws me a pained look. "Be safe, Marley. I'll come check on you before I go to bed."

And she closes the door.


	23. Chapter 23

We're all thinking the same thing.

_"This is fucking bullshit."_

There's just one question -

"S-so is - is Petya still alive, or... not?"

I can't speak for the rest of the group, but I'm stuck somewhere in between grief and anger and I'm having a hard time committing to either one. Anger is the most present - we're _all_ angry, we're all pissed (at least, those of us that are present), but right now, no one's really sure what to do with it or who to aim it at. The cops? The unidentified voices Rachel and I heard? Some unknown person? People? Petya? (Probably not that last one.)

Grief is harder to navigate. It's not even grief - at least, not how I understand it - just this overwhelming sense of numbness and uncertainty; it's how I've felt, to some degree, ever since we pulled Alvarez out of that marsh. It's dissociative, almost - there's an element of _I'm not here, this isn't happening_ on an emotional level that I just can't shake. Even on a more disconnected, purely logical level, I don't know how to feel - maybe Petya's alive, maybe my fear, right now, needs to be _what ifwe don't find him fast enough_ \- or maybe -

Or maybe time isn't exactly _of the essence._

"They have to be," I say. "Even if they aren't, if we assume that they're dead and move too slowly - "

"Move? _Move?"_ Hunter looks around in disbelief. "What - what do you mean _move!?_ What _moves_ are you going to take!? Guys, this is so far out of our control - if you're right, and the police _faked Petya's death,_ what the hell can _we_ do about it?"

No one has a good answer for that.

Five people stare at each other, all of us at a loss. The only person absent is Claudette - all we got from her was a terse message that she wouldn't be coming out. I have to assume that she heard the same news all of us did - I still wish she was here, though. Even if she didn't exactly approve of what Rachel and I did, I think all of us would be a little bit more comfortable if we could lay eyes on the entire group. Or six-sevenths of it, at least.

"We can't just do nothing," I mumble.

Kuwat looks up. "What if we went over their heads? Called the state police?"

I shake my head. "Then we risk spooking them. If state police - or feds - start poking their heads around, then there's a chance that whoever has Petya will just kill them outright. Get rid of the evidence."

Rachel nods. "And we have to consider that whoever we call might be in on it, too."

"Jesus," Corina hisses. "Do you really think...?"

_"I don't know."_ Rachel sighs, and takes a seat in the dirt. "Maybe. Look, let's - let's start from square one. Petya is missing, and _whoever_ is in charge wants people to think they're dead. Not just dead - that they killed themselves. _Why?"_

Corina sits down. "...Because they're actually dead, and they don't want people looking for bodies."

"I can't believe that," I say.

Kuwat shakes his head. "No, Safe's right. If they were just going to kill Petya, they would've faked a suicide. That would've been cleaner." He folds his hands in front of him. "They have to be alive."

"Then why - why _this?"_ Hunter asks.

"Because they saw something they shouldn't have?"

"Like _what?"_

"I think we're forgetting why Petya was out there in the first place," I say. "They were trying to find information on Alvarez."

"You think they found something about him they weren't supposed to?" Corina asks.

"That's the only thing that even _begins_ to make sense. The idea that it's just _coincidence_ is fucking insane."

"So we're just back at square one," Rachel mutters. "We don't know anything more about Alvarez now than we did the night we pulled him out of the marsh."

"We know he was a reporter," Hunter says.

"Yeah, but what the hell was he reporting on? All we know is that he was interested in some disappearances in Clinton, but Chapel Bay is pretty far out of the city."

"Around Clinton," Kuwat mumbles absently, eyes locked on some invisible point in the dirt.

Rachel looks at him. "...What?"

He glances up at her, momentarily dazed. "What? Oh - _around_ Clinton. That's what the article said, right? Or, uh - " he stops for a moment, and fishes around in his backpack, before pulling out the newspaper in question. "Yeah, it says 'In the Clinton area.'"

He looks back around the circle, mind apparently not quite where everyone else's is. Clinton is about a twenty-five minute drive north if you take the highway.

Not _that_ far out of the city.

Phones are already out and searching, bits and scraps of information flying back and forth around the group. There's nothing in the local newspaper - Chapel Bay's, or any adjoining town's - about the disappearances, beyond a bare mention of the phenomenon as a distant occurrence. Widen the net, though - look two, three, four cities over - and slowly but surely, a picture starts to emerge. A picture of:

"Fifteen total disappearances in the last half a decade."

"Four teenage runaways;"

"Three people escaping abusive relationships;"

"Three jobless college dropouts;"

"One person on the run from a murder conviction;"

"Two illegal aliens;"

"One impoverished artist;"

"One person fleeing their debts."

"Seven of them Clinton residents, last seen heading south."

"All of them people that could go missing very easily without anyone being too surprised."

"All of them missing without a trace."

 

My hands are a little shaky. "I really need a fucking smoke," I croak.

Instinctively, my eyes dart to Corina, but she either didn't hear me or doesn't care; she, like Kuwat and Hunter, is staring at her phone, face slack. Someone presses something into my hand, though - my head snaps up, and Rachel's got a lighter in her other hand, sliding her thumb over the plastic body nervously.

I take the cigarette. No - joint. I raise an eyebrow at her. "You just carry this around?" I whisper.

She shrugs, and has the decency to look a little sheepish when Hunter throws her a scolding look. "Just the one. Don't hog it."

I chuckle, but do as she says anyways.

I don't know if it really helps, but it keeps my hands busy.

I hold it out to Hunter, on my right, who shakes their head no, then Kuwat on my left - who also shakes his head no. "I'm all set," he mumbles.

I shrug, and pass to Corina, who is more than happy to accept. "Got your fix before you came out?" I ask out of the side of my mouth.

He snorts. "Yeah. I figured I'd need it."

This prompts a round of surprised hacking from Corina, who I don't think I've heard fuck up like that in years. "Since when do _you_ smoke?" she says once she finally has her breath under control.

"I don't," he says, at almost the exact time I say "He doesn't." Both of us glance at each other. He doesn't elaborate, so I continue, "Our boy here got some weed pills from Petya."

Corina stares at Kuwat with naked awe and newfound respect. _"No shit._ I'd never have guessed." Her face crunches up in confusion for a moment, before she looks at me. "Wait, how do _you_ know that, and I don't?"

I smirk and shrug my shoulders, content to let the answer to that questionlie secret. The look on Corina's face is something I will take with me to my grave.

"Because Safe came over to talk like, two nights ago, and she wanted to high."

Well, so much for that.

"...Well, what did you talk - "

_"Corina,"_ Rachel say sternly. She holds a hand out, and with a start, Corina passes the joint back. Rachel takes a long drag, holds, and exhales. "Sorry, guys, but we can't just _not_ talk about this."

Hunter places a hand on Rachel's. "We're just trying to keep things light," she says quietly -

"Well maybe we fucking _shouldn't!"_ Everyone flinches backwards slightly at the sudden explosion; Rachel stands up, continuing - "We don't have time to just sit on our asses and dance around the possibility that whatever the fuck _this_ is - " she says, waving her phone around - "is getting people _killed!_ Or, at the very least, fucking _disappeared!"_

Corina leans forward. "Yelling at us isn't going to fix anything, Rachel - "

_"Sitting around isn't either!"_ She laughs, short and angry, as she paces around in the dirt. "I mean, for fuck's sake - Claudette isn't even _here_ , and we're just - we should be out there kicking doors in and _wrecking_ shit until we start getting some answers! It took me and Safe breaking into the station before we got _anything_ \- where the hell were you guys on that, _huh!?"_

"We're doing what we can!"

_"Are you?"_ Rachel turns to each person in the group in turn. "What _are_ you doing, exactly? Looking at some shit online? Complaining about how _fucked_ we are? We can sit out here in the dark and bitch about shit all we want, but if you aren't willing to _do_ anything about it - "

_"RACHEL."_

Hunter keeps their eyes locked on Rachel, unblinking, until Rachel finally calms her breathing and sighs. "...Sorry. I'm _sorry_ , okay? But face it - we've been dragging our fucking heels, acting like things are just going to magically resolve themselves, and they _aren't._ Nothing is going to change if we just sit around and _talk_ all the time."

"Then what do you suggest?" Kuwat asks. "What would you have us do? You want to go sneak into the station again? Break everything inside? Burn it down? Go around hitting cops with baseball bats? You _really_ think that's going to help Petya out?"

"...No. No," she mutters, shaking her head. "You're right. But we need to do _something_. We need a way in, we need..."

"We need more info," I finish. "We're still missing something."

Corina looks around the circle. "...We need Claudette."

Rachel coughs, but Corina continues, unabated - "She's the closest thing to an insider that we have. I mean, yeah, it's just secretarial work, but she's at the town hall like, all the time. Even if she hasn't overheard something, she can look around without attracting too much attention - "

_"Will_ she, though?" Rachel grumbles. "I mean, she wasn't too keen on us breaking into the station, and she's not _here_ \- "

"She will," Hunter says, in a voice that makes it clear they don't completely believe that. "After what we found? If we play that recording for her, she _has_ to help us. ...Right?"

Mumbled agreement from the rest of the group. Most of it uncertain.

"So... that's that," Rachel sighs. "I'll call Claudette first thing in the morning and hope for the best." She kicks at the dirt. "Not exactly _decisive action."_

"If you have other suggestions, I'd be glad to hear them," Kuwat says.

She doesn't. None of us do. And after a while, fruitless planning in our heads and spinning our wheels gives way to a long, silent night, punctuated only by the briefest attempts at conversation - more than anything else, it's just hours spent out in the marsh, bracing ourselves against the cold, taking what small comforts we can in the presence of each other while the night presses in around us.


	24. Chapter 24

_The sky is falling apart._

_It begins at the edges of things, but as I watch, it spreads like mold across the expanse until there's nothing left of the original. It's loosing itself at the seams, and all the patches and pieces that so much thread has been holding together are floating down. Spun through the air by the slightest of breezes, streaks and fragments of lavender and periwinkle landing on the waves, grabbing hold of the ocean; finding themselves torn asunder into their component parts - nothing more than colors, dissolved and restitched into the fabric of the ocean._

_Everything in my view is pastiche and imitation - the concept of the sky, the concept of the ocean, as told and retold until little remains but the barest ideas of what those things might be. The voices in the water sing of long lost glories, of colors that were and can be, secrets in the water for the taking, of change on the horizon and lives spent to bring about the great End; and underneath all of them, the slow, resounding contralto, contradicting and repeating and reinforcing and whispering of security and peace and foundations, of things made real -_

_The water reflects the heavens no more than it reflects me; the water is the heavens, and I am the water._

_I am knee-deep in myself before I_ realize what I'm doing.

It comes with a sudden burst of realization, a slap in the face of insight before my brain catches up with the sensation of frigid saltwater soaking the lower half of my jeans and clinging to my legs for dear life, sapping out heat as quickly as it possibly can. I let out a - a noise, a yelp, a strangled shriek and then I'm splashing my way back to the shore to collapse into a ball as soon as I'm safe from the water.

I don't remember how I got here or what I was doing or where I thought I was going, and as fucking terrifying as that is, what's worse is wondering how much farther I would've gone if not for my brain deciding to catch up right then and there. The last thing I can remember is finally heading back home - Kuwat and I, strolling out of the marsh, long after everyone else had headed back, still mostly silent but too tired to really feel nervous or worried about anything. The sky had started to gray, and the entire world had - has, it _still_ has that pre-dawn glow, where shadows soften and blur into nothingness and things lose their definition - we walked out of the marsh, we split at his house, and I -

I headed home.

But I'm not home now. I'm a pile of wet clothes and unconscious tears and salt and with every second that passes, I become just a little bit more visible, out on the beach - I don't know if the curfew even extends this late, but if the boats haven't started out yet, they will soon, and the last thing I need is them - _anyone_ \- seeing me here, like this, and word starting to get around. Mom's already worried. The group's already worried, but I can't get shut out now - not until Petya's back.

So I stand up. My legs feel like jelly, and my feet are completely numb - these shoes are ruined now, I'm sure - but I can still stand, and I can still walk. And with each step back up the beach, a little more feeling drips back in, a little more solidity fills in the world, and reality begins to reassert itself.

But that contralto is _still singing._

_It's song reverberates and rings through grains of sand and down streets just beginning to wake up, across sidewalks and between alleyways, rattling around in dormant brains and vibrating within slowly-beating ventricles. It sings hosannas to the glory of foundations and builds them in the same breath. It is a single, solitary voice, but it alone drowns out all others by sheer volume._

_As I return home, retreat away from the beach, it only swells, deepens, and hollows - and were I to get close enough, I could see the centerpiece of my own home - even as it towers above us - resonating in sympathy, as if it were a giant tuning fork, stuck in the dirt and forgotten for a hundred hundred years._

_It hums, it hums._


	25. Chapter 25

It's dark out when I open my eyes.

That takes a moment to register. I'm in the same bed I crawled in when the sun was just starting to climb over the horizon, and it's dark out now, and I can't figure out how to fit those two facts together.

_Am I blind? Are my window blinds down? Is there an eclipse outside?_ No, no, no - my phone screen illuminates the rest of my room just fine, and I can easily see outside. It looks like night. Overcast, maybe - no stars, no moon, just a flat expanse of black overhead. Clouds have to be high up if they aren't reflecting anything from the towns around us.

And there are people coming up the front walk.

As they pass through the streetlights outside, it's easy to make them out - members of the town council. The Chief of Police. A deputy, maybe. People that I've never really liked, but that the last few days have taught me to _fear_. Despise, even. Maybe it's melodramatic, but I think for a moment that I'm going to vomit, even absent any physical sensation. Any or all of them are involved with this, and here they are to wine and dine with mom and plan god knows what.

My first thought is that I hate them. They disgust me. They scare the shit out of me, and the fact that I can't do anything about it while they sit in my living room and laugh is terrifying.

My second thought is that all of the lights in the house are still off. And the living room is deathly silent.

My third thought is that if it was that easy to convince people that Petya had killed themselves, how hard would it really be to make weird, insane, paranoid, depressed Marley Mackenna disappear?

The window is already open before I even hear the front door open.

I'm on the roof by the time they make it through the foyer.

On the ground outside when they hit the living room.

My feet hit asphalt when they try my bedroom door and find it locked.

And by the time they kick my door in, leaving nothing but splinters in place, crack reverberating through the entire house - not that I'm there to hear it - I'm halfway down the hill.

I pull out my phone while I run - keeping on eye ahead of me, one eye behind me, and one eye on the little screen - and, as quickly as I can, hammer out a message to the rest of the group. _cops came to my hpusr running to tje marsh noe LEAVE ASAP._ I have to hope that's legible enough for them.

I stop at the bottom of the hill, crouched down in a drainage ditch, to catch my breath. Nothing on the road ahead. No people, no other delinquents making their way out of bedrooms - in flight or otherwise. I don't even know what _time_ it is; for all I know, everyone who's going to sneak out already has. There are the beginnings of motion at the top of the hill behind me. No lights - no cars - but shadows starting to move down off the hill in coordinated silence. They're slow, though. They don't know where I am, and if I'm careful, I can keep it that way.

I glance at my phone again. No replies. I can only hope that either everyone else is on the move, or no one else _needs_ to be on the move.

 

...No messages at all, actually.

 

Which seems a little weird, considering I slept straight through a day where we were all supposed to talk to Claudette together, and I didn't wake up until...

 

_10:14 AM._

 

The streetlights go out.

 

And with them, Chapel Bay is plunged into a darkness that goes far, far beyond an overcast, moonless night.


	26. Chapter 26

My breathing stops entirely, and for a moment I _wonder if something's gone wrong, if this is just another episode_ but I know it can't be. Everything around me smacks of reality. It would be easier if it were surreal, if things felt dreamlike or off in a way that would justify me saying _fuck this_ and giving up - but they don't. They feel concretely, coldly, _dangerously_ real, in a way that even the night we pulled Alvarez out of the swamp didn't - and I know, in that moment, that if I don't move _now_ , I might not have a chance to later.

I stand up. The road ahead is almost too dark for me to see; I'm lucky if I can make out the basic contours of things four or five feet ahead of me, but I've run this route so many times that I feel like I could probably do it blindfolded. Which I might as well be, right now.

I take a step forward onto the asphalt, and the most immediately obvious and most immediately worrying thing is how _loud_ that step is. It's easier to notice the complete lack of light - but it takes that step for me to realize that the entirety of Chapel Bay has gone silent. No wind, no cars, no electric hum, no fans or ventilation systems. All that's left the town's natural soundscape is the ebb and flow of the waves - and even that feels... broken. Cheap. Like it's been recorded into a poor microphone, and replayed from a boombox sitting just off stage in a middle school play.

A (masochistic?) part of me wants nothing more than to turn around and run to the water, but I know that whatever I'd see there, I'd regret it.

I have nothing to do but move forward and hope that I can hide in the marsh - and from there, the woods at the edge, and from there... I don't know. Clinton, maybe. Maybe farther south. Maybe just keep heading inland. Right now I need to keep moving, though - more steps follow that first, treading as lightly as I can without tiptoeing across the blacktop. Before I know it, I've hit the sidewalk on the other side; from there, I keep going, farther and farther down the street - don't worry about sidestreets, don't worry about getting to the optimal part of the marsh, just worry about getting out of the town -

But

there's something in my way.

I don't even see it as much as I just _feel_ it. It's not something I've ever felt before, but the sensation is familiar - it's something I've _seen_ time and time again, translated into a deep, innate, nearly psychic sense. I don't need to be able to see it to sense the hole that it occupies in the world.

It looms.

Metal legs and all.

I come to a stop a ways away, diving off of the road and into the grass of the nearest lawn. I can only hope that it didn't hear me approaching. Even if it did, I can't hear _it._ These have always been quiet, but now - when each minuscule sound feels amplified tenfold - it feels like it's floating across the street. All I have to go on is the tiniest _tink_ of legs landing on the ground as it paces past me, like a pin dropping in an empty room, if that pin was attached to a machine that can - and now, I'm certain, _will_ kill me if it finds me. Or, at best, hurt me. Make sure that I don't get away from here unharmed. Or at all.

~~ There's no one with it. It's not on anyone's leash. ~~

This isn't like last time, though. Something is different - I don't know what to call it, maybe it's resolve, maybe it's the concrete knowledge that my life actually _is_ on the line, not just in a hazy abstract way, maybe the mix of sleep deprivation and adrenaline are just canceling each other out - but right now I feel just as steely as the thing walking past me. I do not shake. I do not quiver. I lie in the grass, motionless, breathing nearly silent, as it comes closer and closer down the street until it's as close to me as it's going to get.

There is a sound these things make. You don't usually hear it often, because if you're lucky, you don't get close enough to - it's an extremely quiet, airy, rhythmic sort of noise. Sort of like pistons pumping, except it doesn't match up with any actual movement of the machine - not that I can tell. It's just a constant, sort of low ebb and flow of sound. I've only heard it a few times - once, when I was young, and the police introduced the machines to our class, up close and personal, as an educational experience. It sounded like the waves to me, then, and that's an image that's stuck with me on the rare occasions that I've gotten a little _too_ close on my nightly excursions. It felt appropriate.

Now though - here, without the pollution and obfuscation of other noise - it doesn't really sound like the ocean.

_It sounds like breathing._

That thought rattles and sings through my head as the machine creeps up to and past me without so much as twitching in my direction, but it isn't until the machine has finally faded into the dark - until I can no longer see, hear, or feel it - that the thought finally comes home to roost.

I don't know what to do with it.

So I stand back up. And I keep running, murmuring silent pleas for guidance and prayers of thanks to anyone who might be listening, as mailboxes and front walks and lawn decorations appear out of the dark in front of me, and disappear back into it behind me just as quickly. I could've done this blindfolded if I wasn't running, maybe, but I'm seriously lost now - I don't know where I am on A Street, or how much farther it is to the marsh. I'm starting to panic again - _really_ panic, like, _maybe this never ends - maybe the marsh is just_ gone _\- maybe I just keep running until I die or I get caught_ kind of panic - when I finally see it ahead of me.

_The ditch. The edge of town._

I could scream or jump for joy or both, but I opt to save that sensation for later. Instead, I sprint over the last fifteen feet, and make to leap straight over it and run into the marsh -

_When something grabs my leg._

I crash to the ground in a heap with a barely stifled scream, and momentarily, _everything_ goes black - my entire mode of thought _dips_ for a second, and then sensation and motion come rushing back in. I lash out with my free leg, and something connects - I hear a muffled grunt of pain - and the grip on my leg slackens. I pull it free, and as soon as I'm able, roll over and knock my attacker to the ground, pinned underneath me. I let off with a punch that hits them in the face, _solid_ \- nothing breaks, but something _moves_ for sure -

" _Fucking CHIRST, Safe!"_

Two hands go up across the face, and I hesitate - arm raised for a second strike. "Jesus, you'd better not have broken my fucking nose," the person mumbles.

"...Corina? Oh - oh _shit - "_ In a hurry, I roll off of her, pulling her upright. "Oh my god, I'm sorry - are - are you okay? What the hell did you think were you _doing?"_

Corina sits up unsteadily, and wipes at her nose - coming away with a sleeve smeared with blood. "Fuck."

"I - I thought you were trying to..."

"Yeah, yeah," she mutters absently. "I didn't know how the hell else to stop you without shouting at you. I didn't think you'd smash my fucking _nose_ in - "

She stops, and we look at each other. The realization that we've been making a _lot_ of noise hits us both at the same time, and wordlessly, we scramble to our feet and charge forward into the swamp. I have to pace myself. Corina's lagging behind me a little, still trying to keep a hand to her nose, and the last thing I want is to lose her right now.

Navigating the marsh in complete darkness is a fucking disaster. The intricate networks and pathways of elevated land and half-finished wooden walkways that I can usually count on to keep me dry are fucking useless without a light, and neither of us are willing to risk pulling out phones or flashlights right now. There's only silence behind us, but we have no idea who might be following in our wake, or if light sources are going to cut through the darkness around us anyways. I have a sneaking suspicion that they won't.

Needless to say that if I had the time to stop and think about my current situation, I'd be cold, soaking wet, terrified, aching, and deeply, deeply confused - but right now I don't really have room in my head for much more than a cursory awareness of where Corina is and the drive to keep moving forward, water or not water.

I don't know how long we've been moving - maybe ten minutes. Time feels weird, here. Maybe that's just an effect of the environment - or - or lack thereof - but the longer we're out here, it gets harder and harder to measure a second, or the time it takes to put one foot in front of the other. But before I know it, our sprint has slowed to a run, a run to a jog, a jog to a walk, and then we're stumbling through the marsh, aimlessly, no idea how far we've come or where we're going besides a general sense of _inland._

"Safe," Corina pants - the first thing she's said since we left - "hold up, please."

I come to a stop, and look behind us. Still nothing. Five, six feet of water and mud, and then beyond that... nothing. No uniforms running after us, no searchlights sweeping across the horizon, no mechanical monstrosities chasing after us in silence.

This isn't nearly as reassuring as I'd hoped.

I look over at Corina. This is probably the first good look at her I've gotten, and she's a fucking mess; blood, snot, and mud-encrusted, eyes unfocused, hair a tangled disaster. I don't even want to think about how I look right now.

She coughs, and seems to catch her breath. "Okay, Safe. What's the plan?"

I blink at her. Dumbfounded, I respond, "I - I don't know. Get away from town - "

"I think we've done a pretty good job of that," she laughs. "Seriously. What now? I don't think - if _this_ is any indication," she says, gesturing at the darkness around us, "I don't think running until we see the sky again is going to work out too well."

"...No," I mutter, "you're right." I pull out my phone. Battery's almost dead. No messages in response. No signal. "I don't know if anyone else made it out, but... we need to regroup. If there _is_ a 'we.'" I glance around us. "We need to head... south, I guess - " pointing in a direction that I'm not _really_ sure is south, but it seems as likely as anywhere else - "until we hit a road. Follow inland until we can make our way to Wilson's Hollow, and... hope that everyone else does the same." There's nowhere else we _could_ meet, I guess, short of staying in town. We have a handful of well-known locations we could meet up at, but in this light, there's no way we could find them without just wandering around or hoping for the best. "And after, that... I don't know."

Corina coughs again, but she nods. "Good enough for me. After you."


	27. Chapter 27

We weren't the only ones who thought of going to the Hollow.

When we arrive - an hour later, maybe; I still can't really tell - we find two other bodies sitting in the clearing. Kuwat and Rachel. After a tense, panic-wrought moment where neither pair of shadows is certain what the other pair is, Corina and I collapse onto the ground - sopping wet, tired, hungry, and - in my case, at least - numb.

Corina turns to Rachel. "Is Hunter - ?"

She shakes her head. "I went by their house, but it was too late. They were already outside, walking into a cop car." She pauses. "They didn't look like they were handcuffed, or hurt or anything." In a smaller, more tired voice, "I hope they're okay."

No one is eager to offer up opinions on who is or isn't okay. "How did you get out?" Corina asks Kuwat.

He shrugs. "Same way you guys did, probably. Out my window, head down, run like crazy for the marsh. I got out clean - uniforms didn't even arrive at my house until I was already a couple blocks away." He pauses. "Got here about half an hour ago. Rachel showed up maybe fifteen minutes later."

I look around. "And Claudette?"

Kuwat and Rachel look at each other. Rachel takes hold of the conversation - hesitantly, she speaks, "Look, guys, we've... we've been talking." She looks at Kuwat, and he nods. "Neither of us had anyone show up at our houses until close to two minutes after we got that text from you, Safe."

I blink at them. "So?"

"So... that's weird. Okay, what - what _exactly_ happened before you sent that message?"

"Um..." I close my eyes. "I woke up. Checked my phone. Looked outside to see why it was so dark. Saw people coming up the front walk, realized they probably weren't here for a social visit, so I climbed out the window and ran." I look back up at them. "That's it."

"How long would you say that took you?" Kuwat asks. "From looking outside to texting us?"

"I don't know. Two minutes - maybe two and a half?" I glance back them, worry starting to mount in my mind. "What - what are you getting at, here?"

Kuwat sighs. "It just seems a little weird that - if the cops were trying to nab all of us, why they'd go after you - on the opposite side of town - close to four minutes before any of the rest of us. If it were me, I'd have tried to grab everyone at once, but - for some reason, they went for you first." His eyes narrow. "And then, once you escaped and sent out that text, the lights go out, and people start showing up at _our_ houses - "

"Hold the fuck _on,"_ I spit, "if you think _I_ had anything to do with this - "

"No, no!" Rachel interjects. "At least - not directly." She bites her lip. "But... we have to wonder, if you hadn't sent that text, if they would've come for any of us in the first place."

Corina sits up. "Yeah, but how would they have known about the text unless - "

She shuts her mouth halfway through the sentence. Kuwat finishes it, quietly. "...Unless someone else showed them it?"

"If they have Petya's phone," Corina starts -

"I didn't send the message to Petya," I whisper. "After he disappeared, I cut him out of our group texts. In case someone else was watching his phone."

Rachel looks between us. "I'm here. Kuwat's here. You guys are. Petya's out of the picture. Hunter got grabbed." She pauses. "Who does that leave?"

"...You think Claudette - ?"

"Sold us out?" Kuwat nods. "Yeah. I do."

"That's ridiculous," Corina sputters. "Claudette wouldn't just - "

"Wouldn't she?" I mutter. I turn towards her. "She hasn't believed us on this since day one. When we told her we had evidence, she stayed at home. She _works_ at City Hall - "

Rachel spits. "I called her this morning. Asked her if she'd poke around the office and see if she could find anything. If she took that to the cops - well. Look at us now."

Corina looks from face to face. "Holy shit. Holy fucking _shit_ , that _bitch - "_

"Corina!" I reach out to grab her by the shoulder. "Please, just... let's try to keep our heads on straight." I look back to Kuwat. "Fine. Claudette probably fucked us over. What _now?"_

Kuwat and Rachel share a look. "We don't know."

I sigh, and lean back until I'm laying on the ground again. "Great."

 

I forgot my coat again.

 

Some time passes. Mostly in silence.

"Are we going to talk about the light issue we're having?" Kuwat mumbles.

"No."

"No."

"No."

"Fine, then," he mutters.

I glance at my phone. It's not even noon, and still... overhead, there's nothing. "Was it like this when you woke up, Rachel?"

Rachel's in the midst of drawing circles in the dirt with her finger, but my question gives her pause. "...I don't know," she admits. Nervous chuckle. "I can't really remember, I guess."

No one else can really remember, either.

"Lot of that going around," I muse.

 

"My nose still hurts," Corina grumbles.

I hold up my hands defensively. "I said I was sorry, okay?"

Kuwat looks at me. "Wait, what happened?"

"Safe punched me in the fucking nose."

"I thought you were trying to kill me!" I exclaim. "Some stranger grabs me in the dark while I'm running for my life, what do you think I'm going to - "

Corina laughs, then winces. "I got you, Safe. You're already forgiven. Still hurts, though."

Kuwat inches forward. "Let me see." She leans towards him, nose pointed up, and he hums. "Jesus. That is a _lot_ of blood. Hold on - " he reaches out and wiggles her nose, slightly, triggering a deeply uncomfortable groan of pain. "Well, it's not broken, at least. Come on," he says as he stands up, "let's get you cleaned up a little."

Corina grumbles something about it not being that bad, but doesn't resist as Kuwat leads her over to the pool of water, dissolving into faint contours at the edge of my vision in the process. As they recede, I look over at Rachel, who has produced a small knife from somewhere and is absentmindedly whittling sticks down to nothing. I raise my eyebrows twice in quick succession, in a _you seeing this?_ kind of gesture.

She just frowns at me. "...What?" I jerk my head over to Kuwat and Corina, and she follows my gaze. She looks back to me for a moment, obviously distressed, and whispers, "W-what? Is something wrong - ?"

I smirk and repeat the gesture, and _this_ time, she looks back at me with dawning comprehension. _"Ooooooh,"_ she intones, before returning to her project with a small smile on her face.

I settle back, content to give the two lovebirds what little privacy a silent, dark day will allow.

 

I need a drink.

Or a smoke.

Or some of Kuwat's little pills, or _something_ to take the edge off of things, but we don't even really have _food_ out here. Maybe there are berries out in the woods or something, but right now, I guess we've collectively, silently decided to lay in the dirt and wait to die or think of a better idea. All we have is a pool of freshwater, which is better than nothing, I guess.

I still need a drink, though.

I groan my way to my feet. My limbs feel stiff and still sort of numb; it's still well above freezing outside, but make no mistake - it's fucking _cold_. Middle of the day or not. There's no breeze out here, no wind to speak of - a blessing, in some regards, but I'd almost prefer the wind chill if it meant there was _some_ ambient noise. It's starting to grate on me - there's nothing to listen to out here, besides the scraping of Rachel's knife and the quiet murmuring and splashing from Petya and Corina.

They look up as I stroll over to the pool, careful not to walk so far that I can't still see Rachel out of the corner of my eye. (Not that I think she's going to disappear on me - but better safe than sorry.) Corina's face is, from what I can tell, pretty clear of blood and mud, though she - like the rest of us - could probably still do with a good shower and a fresh change of clothes. The two of them are sitting on the edge of the pool, dangling their feet in the water - it must not be quite as cold as I thought. Or maybe they're just nuts. Both equally likely possibilities.

Corina quirks a small smile at me - more of an _I'm okay_ than anything else. Kuwat is a little less reserved in the width of his smile, but even then, the effect is still blunted by every other part of his body language still reading tense and afraid.

"How's the water?" I ask as I bend down. "Still fresh?"

"Yeah," Kuwat says. "Still drinkable, I guess. Went down easy enough."

I look into the water. It's borderline opaque in the dark; just a sheet of the darkest blue possible, disturbed only the the ripples Kuwat and Corina are making.. "I wonder how deep it goes," I muse. We've all been swimming in the Hollow before, and we all know better than to fuck around near the center. There's a slow, gradual slope near the shore, but the closer you get the middle of the pool, the deeper it gets - pretty quickly, you can't stand up in it; soon after that, you reach a point where you can swim down as far as you want, but unless you've got an oxygen supply with you, you aren't going to find anything.

"No better time to find out," Corina says. She chuckles, darkly. No one echoes her.

I sigh. I crouch down, resting on the balls of my feet, and dip my hand into the water.

It turns _white._

_Not white like clear, not white like paint; white like milk, lit from the inside - the only source of light in the world, maybe, but not shimmering or shining. It stays flat and featureless - only by the shore can I see even the slightest darkening of dirt underneath - like a light behind a plastic sheet, or fire within paper lanterns._

_I yank my hand out of it with a shriek as Corina and Kuwat scramble away from the pool - for a moment, I can feel the not-water stick to my skin, threaten to pull it away, before the light dies out of it and it turns back to clear, normal water, droplets falling off of my arm and back into the pool._

_"Safe," Corina says, voice shaking wildly, "what the fuck did you_ do? _What the fuck - "_

_And then, before my eyes, like nothing had happened, the pool dims, light seeping out of it and into the environment, swallowed up by the dark, until once again, we are in a lightless world, standing_ around a pool of water like any other.

I whirl back to the group. "You - you saw that, right?" I stutter. "I-I-I didn't just - that really _happened_ , didn't it? I d-didn't dream - "

"We saw it," Rachel said, her voice quietly awed. "Whatever it was."

Whatever it was. _Whatever it was._

I turn back to the water and lean down again. Hesitantly, I stick the tip of a finger in, and while the water doesn't change again -

_Voices begin to flood in._

_Voices of encouragement -_

_Voices of change -_

_Alvarez speaking to me in a voice I've only ever heard utter two words -_

_Petya whispering to me in hurried, desperate directions -_

_An uncountably large chorus of the dead, singing my praises and their histories -_

_And all of them, urging me to do one thing only -_

I pull my hand out and turn back to the group.

"I think I need to go in the water."

They blink at me in confusion, but it's Rachel who explodes first - "Like _hell you do!_ Jesus, Safe, what do you think you're _doing?_ The last thing any of us needs to do is freeze to death out here - "

"You don't understand," I say, struggling to keep my voice calm and steady - struggling to sound as sane as I feel. "I can - I can _hear_ the water, telling me to - "

"To fucking _kill_ yourself!? Do you have any idea how you sound right - !?"

Corina holds an arm out in front of Rachel, and she stops. "What are you hearing, Safe?"

I look back towards the water. "...I don't know, I admit, but it sounds like - " and as I say it, the connection forms in my mind - "it sounds like the tide _felt - "_

"You _touched_ it!?" Rachel slams a hand to her face. "Safe, you fucking _told_ me - "

_"Rachel."_ Corina looks towards her, waiting for her silence, and then back to me. "Alright, Safe," she says, her voice weak. "Just be careful."

Kuwat looks back and forth between them helplessly, before locking eyes with me and giving me the barest nod. All Rachel can do is turn away and watch me out of the corner of her eye.

I turn, and with a final breath to steel myself, I take one step into the water, clothes and all.

I don't know what I was expecting. I had thought - hoped - that with how Corina and Kuwat acted before, the water would be warm, whether by some freakish natural law or supernatural bullshit, but it's anything but. It feels like ice water. No, more than that, it feels like ice - no, like water that's gone far, far below the freezing point, but still persists as liquid nonetheless. That first step submerges me up to my ankle, and I almost scream - almost scramble back out - but that contact with the water brings back the voices, reassuring and guaranteeing and guiding me farther in.

Each step into the water is colder than the last. Heat leaves the body; ice enters. And the farther I go, as the water rises above my stomach, the more those voices fade, like people standing behind me, increasingly at a distance - and in their place are whispers of tide and salt and small, long-dead things with too many arms and legs; fractured geometries protruding from the ocean floor and bursting up into the sky, miles high and forever in motion.

It's over my neck now. The water tastes like old death. I'm breathing it in -


	28. a momentary digression

_There is magic, and there is magic._

_There is the magic that comes with study and practice, with rules and expectations and laws; the magic-as-science, the magic-as-language; the magic of wizards - the magic of your young adult fictions and your old adult fictions, your Harry Potters and So You Want To Be A Wizards and Sabriels, where the only thing in between you and what you want to happen is the right knowledge and ingredients and words -_

_And then there is magic._

_The kind of magic that obeys no law except it's own; the kind of magic that you don't practice so much as you borrow from. The kind of magic where a spell is not a thing you invent or create, but discover, and hope that you can manage to use without swallowing you whole. The kind of magic that doesn't care who you are or what you do with it, but rest assured - it_ knows _who you are and what you want to do; the magic-as-religion, the magic-as-faith; the magic of magicians - not men in flashy costumes making monuments disappear and cards sort themselves, but old magicians; the Fausts, the Solomons, the o'Dims and the Alzahareds and the Jadises -_

_The kind of magic where becoming a practitioner is not something you study to become, but something that happens to you - the magic of the earth and the sky, the magic of things that we could study for an eternity and still only catch a glimpse of -_

 

 _But sometimes, in some places, if you're careful and you stay alert, you can see where they start to break_ through -


	29. Chapter 29

\- and spitting it back out.

The sensation of being submerged lingers for moments, water clinging to my hair and my clothes and filling my lungs until breath is no longer an option - but only a few seconds pass before the moment passes, my breathing returns, and every part of me (clothes included) is dry.

The sensation is, instead, replaced with another that rings of atmospheric malice.

I feel it before I even open my eyes - that wherever I am now, I _shouldn't_ be here, and the air knows that just as well as I do. Even if it lacks the animus to do so, every part of my environment wants to see me gone, and until that's possible, to make me suffer.

Which begs the question of where the hell I am.

I open eyes.

_Which_ hell might be the better question.

Things don't really click at first. Even with the escalating surreality of the past week, part of my mind is still anchored to normality, and there's no way for me to rectify what I'm looking at with any proper conception of Normal. Not in an _incomprehensible, beyond alien, drive you mad by looking at it_ way, but -

What I'm looking at is machinery.

A lot of it. Old machinery - gears, cogs, pistons, chains, pipes, motors, dials, all of it aged and worn down, all of it completely inscrutable, all of it enormous beyond belief. Not the individual components, but the construction of the thing - it stretches infinitely in every direction that I can see; everything that isn't metal is void, even darker than what we were trapped in beforehand. At my feet is metal - sheet metal, stapled together with massive crude bolts, patched over repeatedly until there's nothing left but a mosaic of rust and alloys that I can't name.

The other thing is -

It's silent.

A room - rooms? a cave? a cavern? - of inscrutable, hostile machinery, and it's all silent. Motionless. In fact, I don't know when any of this has _ever_ been used - there's so much collective rust and grime on anything that even if the power got switched on, it might just break down immediately.

That silence is infinitely worse than any noise would've been.

I drag myself up off my knees, wincing at the echo of my motion. Whatever it is I'm standing on, it seems like it's steady. I can't tell if it's _on_ something, or being held up - on either side of the narrow paths spreading out into the dark is just _emptiness_ , and the barest hint of more machinery below. The only light at hand is the dull red glow of what looks like an emergency light, faintly pulsing overhead. I don't know what it means that it's on, nor do I have any idea what the stuff it's attached to does.

I look around. No sign of Corina, Kuwat, or Rachel.

I don't know if I should be happy about that or not.

There are three paths around me, each of them made of the same stuff I'm standing on, each of them dark, each of them nearly identical in how little I know about what lies on them. I'm about to pick one at random when something changes.

This place isn't silent anymore.

Far ahead, to the - to the right, I guess; I don't know where the cardinal directions are, I'm not even sure which direction I was facing when I got here - I can hear... noises. It's impossible to tell what they are - they could be footsteps, the could be conversation, they could be machinery whirring, they could be gunshots - all I know is that there's _something_ over there, and one of the paths leads straight in that direction.

With nothing else to go on, I turn and head down the path, walking heel-to-toe to keep as quiet as possible. It's only after I've started walking that it occurs to me that _maybe_ , just maybe, heading _towards_ the noise might not be the safest course of action right now. But I don't have any other choice that I can see - no matter where I go, I'm heading into the unknown and probably dangerous.

As I walk, I keep an eye out for anything useful. Both ahead of me, and to my sides. More of those dim, pulsing, sometimes flickering lights are spaced along the path, so I never have to take more than a few steps without at least knowing where my foot is going to land, and at times, that's enough to see my surroundings in detail, for whatever good it does me.

Slowly, what looked like scratches or sings of wear begin to look more like they're intentional. Some of it is structured - patterns, glyphs; something that might be language, though it isn't like anything I've ever seen - while other markings are cruder, more direct, and far more worrying. Claw marks. Dents, signs of impact.

What look like the tallies of someone counting days.

The noise I'm following begins to resolve into more recognizable sounds. A repetitive, pulsing _thrum_ , low enough that it's more feeling than noise. Infrequent footsteps, accompanied by the unsteady, shaky sound of something sharp scratching on metal. _Conversation_.

I slow my footsteps. I'm still too far to hear anything, but I can make out two distinct voices, I think. Taking extra care to walk as quietly as possible, I move forward until I see a light in the distance - brighter and clearer than anything else I've seen down here - shining from around a corner. The environment around me starts to change, too - still raw, unpolished metal, but less machinery and more... structure. The patchwork nature of the walkway has all but vanished; now, the floors neatly tile, and stretch far enough to my left and right that there are no gaps going down. The machinery on my sides is gone, replaced with honest to god walls.

I slow my pace even further as I approach the corner ahead. Silently, I come to a stop just shy of turning it and crouch down, listening as closely as I can.

Whoever's ahead, they aren't trying to be quiet. There are two... voices, I suppose - a woman's, maybe even the voice on the tape, and - and something _else._ It's speaking - speaking clearly, speaking in words that I can understand - but the way it's talking feels _wrong_ , even if all the sounds are technically right.

And it sounds _angry_.

"You think I _care!?"_ it - it _hisses_ \- "How could you let it get this bad in the first place?"

The woman speaks, and it's obvious that she's on the defensive. Her tone is low and placating, but it doesn't sound like it's working. "We overstepped our bounds. Keeping up with your demands while still looking for external sources has been difficult - "

"Then _find the fuel internally._ I don't care _where_ it comes from, what I _care_ about is that you let people _through."_

She pauses. "It was an oversight on our part, and we're working to correct it. We had thought that we could keep things under control - "

"Under _CONTROL!?!"_ it shrieks. "Does _this_ seem under control to you?"

"...No, sir."

_"No, it does not,"_ it - he? - responds. "I don't think I need to remind you that our deal is _highly_ conditional. If you do not hold up your end of the deal - or worse, if you endanger _us - "_

"That won't happen," she says. "Measures are in place to keep anything from leaking out. We aren't going to make the same mistake we made with the reporter. And even if something _did_ get out - they're children. No one would believe them."

"I hope you're right. For your sake, as well as ours."

"I am. We should have the four that are left within the hour. A scout has already found three of them; they're just waiting on backup before moving in."

My blood runs cold. I don't know if I can find my way back to where I started - and even if I get there, I'm not sure how to get back out of - wherever this is, but if I don't warn them soon -

"...And the last one?"

A pause. "...We don't know. But we're sure that the others will talk. They were all supposed to be together."

A longer pause. "Where were they found?"

"Near the outermost entrance," she replies.

Something that must be a laugh echoes out. "And if we're missing a body, then where do you think they might've gone?"

The woman lets out a strangled gasp. "You don't think - "

_Time to leave._ I turn, and trying to keep my pace steady, but quiet, begin to walk in what I think is the direction I came from. Behind me, increasingly - distressed? energetic? noises filter in from the room I almost saw. The voices escalate, but I can't understand what they're saying anymore - I'm not even really trying to. I'm more focused on keeping one foot in front of the other, making sure that whoever - _whatever_ was in that room, they don't find _me_.

I hit a fork in the path. I don't remember which way I came from, but I know I was heading towards the voices, so if I just head away from them, I should end up in the same general area. (Not really. But I'm hanging on to every hope I can get right now.) So I go right, and I continue to stumble and skitter my way down more metal, trying not to trip and fall into the vast emptiness that's once again filling everything that isn't floor or machine. And then I go left. And then I go right.

And then I go right again, just to change things up, but something's wrong - the voices aren't getting any quieter. Or louder. They're persisting, and they're no longer the panicked tones that I heard before. They're calm. Assured. And that worries me way more than the anger had.

I turn another corner, and suddenly, I'm in a room.

Staring at the bruised, bloodied face of Petya Hagebak, slumped over in the middle of the floor.

Seconds tick by before I realize exactly who I'm standing in front of, and more past that before I start to move and process. "P-Petya!?" I almost yell. "Petya, are you - ?"

Petya doesn't respond, and I scramble over to him. "Petya? _Petya?"_ They're in really bad shape - I don't know _how bad_ , exactly ( _I'm_ not the one with medical experience in our little group), but I'd be surprised if they made it out of this without a few scars. Their face is a patchwork of half-scabbed over wounds and technicolor bruises, and when I reach down to lift up their face, my hands come away bloody.

_"Petya,"_ I hiss again - as loudly as a I dare - and with that, their eyes flutter open.

Their pupils dilate and contract and unfocus and refocus on my face. "S-Safe?" they choke out, just before breaking into a hacking, dry cough that sets my teeth on edge. "What are you - ?"

"Not now," I hiss. "We need to get you _out_ of here, ASAP. Can you walk?"

I'm not really sure if they nod or not, but I don't have time to ask again. I get one arm under them and hoist them up, trying to ignore the groans of pain in the process. They'll have to forgive me. Once they're up, they seem steady enough that I can carry them with one arm of their shoulder. "Come on," I say, "let's go, _fast."_

"No," they mumble, "no, no, _Safe -_ Safe, you have to leave me, you have to get out of here - "

"I'm not leaving you here." _Not after all of the bullshit you've put us through_.

As I say that, though, Petya's legs go slack, and it's the best I can do to make sure they don't land hard when they slide to the ground. "Listen," they pant, "listen - Safe, you have to get out of here, and you have to tell Kuwat and Rachel and everyone else to get the _fuck_ out of town _now - "_

"I _can't,"_ I say. "Jesus, Petya, what did they _do_ to you."

They let off with another round of coughs that rack their body. "They're trying to make me _useful,"_ they wheeze. "But the fucking joke's on them, because I'm _useless."_

They snicker, but I don't really feel like joining in. I'm just about to try and get them back up and go, when their eyes lock on something behind me and widen. I turn, and -

 

I don't even really _feel_ the blow. I feel it coming more than I feel the actual impact; all I know is that there's something behind me, and a nanosecond later, my face is pressed into the cold metal, the back of my head hurts, and I'm being dragged across the floor.

Around the corner.

Into the other room.

Where I'm tossed to the ground, rolled over onto my back, and forced to look into something that words can't do justice.

"Well, well, well," it hisses, "look what we have here."


	30. Chapter 30

_It's a monster -_

_It's a man in a black suit -_

_It's a wolf with too many eyes -_

_It's a beak, dripping with flesh -_

_It's a woman, eyes cold and knife bloody -_

_It's bone, spasming and twisting -_

_It's smoke -_

_It's fire -_

_It's machinery -_

It's all of those things and none of them. Looking at it is the experience of mis-seeing something out of the corner of my eye - a black handbag becomes a cat, a coat rack becomes a man - but constant, a perpetual experience of my eyes making mistakes and my brain struggling to catch up.

And when it speaks, it sounds like empty stairwells.

"I think you can tell your lackeys that the search is over," it rasps.

I think - I think I'm back in that room I almost went to. I'm somewhere else, at least - Petya's not there, but someone else is. A person-shaped blur, in the corner, watching me and the _thing_ idly. It's looming over me, swallowing up most of my vision, but as it talks, it retreats, until it stands a few feet away, eyes (?) still fixed on me.

"I - I suppose so," the blur - the _woman_ says, her voice absent - I turn, finally, and get a look at her, and she's...

No one I recognize.

Well - maybe she's someone, maybe she's a face I've seen in a crowd, or around town, or at one of my mom's parties - but no one I can put a name to. She tilts her head, and looks at me, expression still slightly dazed. "You're... Lucy's boy. Marley."

Before I even have a chance to respond, the thing _crows_ with... laughter. I think. "Fantastic, fantastic. Of course it is."

I push myself back up to a crouching position, and when neither of them move to stop me, I get to my feet. I had hoped that, if I was level with it, I'd be able to understand what I was looking at a little better, but -

"W-What the fuck _are_ you?" I ask. (I hate how weak my voice sounds as soon as I open my mouth.)

It smiles at me - I think - and weaves back and forth across the floor, aimlessly, that same scraping noise from before echoing through the room. "A friend, I hope. A kind soul, looking to help out you and your little community." A pause. "I believe Ms. Nathaniel prefers the word _benefactor."_

The woman - Ms. Nathaniel - smiles thinly across me. "It seems more appropriate," she says.

"What the hell does that even mean?" I say. "You want to _help_ me?"

"Of course," it says. "Why, I would consider myself patron of the people of your little town. I've had a long history of positive dealings with your people, Marley, and I see no reason for that to change now. Certainly, it's only fair that you be brought into the equation."

"I wouldn't bother," Ms. Nathaniel says. "His whole group is full of malcontents, I doubt they're interested - "

_"Did I ask,"_ it screeches, _"for your opinion?"_

She swallows - audibly - and steps back from both of us. Satisfied, the... thing - the _benefactor_ \- returns it's attention to me. "This," it whispers, "is just between us."

"Are you going to kill me?" I whisper.

The thing makes a noise. "I think that's up to you."

"Let me lay things out," it continues. "What we have here is a simple two-way partnership. Your people provide me and my compatriots with fuel for our works," it says, sweeping something around it in a grand gesture at the expanse of machinery, "and we keep you afloat. The fish keep swimming, rain keeps falling, the ocean stays at bay. You help us, and we help you."

"Fuel?"

It tilts at me. "Of course, Marley. You have to keep the fires burning for all of _this_ to work, after all."

I shudder. "And what do you burn?"

I had thought that I might've seen it smile before, but now - _now_ I really see it smile, and I don't know if I've ever been so sick in my entire life.

"You."

It sees something in my face it likes, because it makes that same noise of not-quite laughter as before. It gestures towards Ms. Nathaniel. "Or her." It looks upwards. "Or anyone up there. Take your pick."

I regain control of my mouth. "Y-you burn _people!?"_

"Well, no. Not really. That would be horribly inefficient, but - it's the best analogue you people have for what I do. It serves a good enough purpose."

Honestly, I'm struck speechless. I don't know how to respond to such a cavalier response to something so... unreal. I opt to go for anger, in the end. "You're - you're _fucking insane!_ What the fuck is _wrong_ with you - !? Why would you _even - "_

It makes a shrugging motion. Almost. "Why do you care? Ms. Nathaniel takes great pride in bringing me people who won't be missed. No one from your little _town_ , certainly. It really doesn't concern you _."_

"Like _hell_ it doesn't."

"No, what _should_ concern you," it continues unabated, "is how _you_ are going to fit into this. You see, as far as I'm concerned, there are two types of your people worth considering." I get a ~~mental~~ image, for a split-second, of a teacher counting off on their fingers. "There are the people who decide they want to be friends - who decide that they want to _bring_ me fuel - and then there's _everyone else."_

I shake my head emphatically. "No. _No._ I'm not going to be a part of this - I'm going to tell _everyone_ about what you're doing, and then - "

It clicks it's tongue. Or - a tongue clicks, somewhere. "Disappointing," it hums. "I had hoped for more from you, Marley. As the son of - "

"My _name_ isn't _Safety,"_ I hiss, "and I am _not_ a _boy."_

Momentary disgust - or anger? - flickers across the thing's face, but almost immediately it's replaced by the same easy smile as before. "Whatever makes you happy," it purrs. "You'll burn just as brightly either way."

"I'm going to _kill_ you," I fume. "I'm going to get out of here, and I'm going to make sure that everyone knows _what_ you're doing, and once I save Petya, I'm going to make sure that _this_ stops. Those seventeen people - "

I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't Ms. Nathaniel bursting out into laughter behind me. "S-Seven - _snrk_ \- _Seventeen!_ Oh, _god,_ and here I thought you had _any_ idea what was _happening!"_

The thing rustles, and begins to advance. "No, child, _here_ is what is going to happen. You are going to fight, and resist, and bicker, and whine, and complain, and you will be _useless_ to me until you cease. If you will not work _with_ me," it continues, voice dropping into bass growl that's more metal than anything else, "then you are a _threat_ , and you have two paths in front of you. If you continue to kick and scream, then I will beat you down until I get bored of doing so, and I will _kill_ you forthright, grind you into nothing, and scatter you into the ocean with the rest. A waste," it sneers, "but I have little use for fuel with no utility. If we are _lucky_ , however - " it's voice continues to drop down, descending infinite staircases - "then for each bit of anger you throw at me, I will return it _tenfold_ , until you are _broken before me_ , and then - _only_ then - will you have the pleasure of keeping these _glorious_ wheels turning."

I spit at it. "I would rather _die."_

It's face - and now, it is a face - splits into a wide, terrifying gin. "If you say so."

There's a brief moment of nothing - a flicker of nonexistence - and then, I step _sideways_ through things -

The world around me doesn't whir to life, it just suddenly _is_ alive, gears spinning, motors purring, pistons pumping, all of it in perfect concert and all of it _loud_ , a caterwaul of machine _noise_ , pressing in from every direction, driving me to my knees, hands clutched over my ears as Ms. Nathaniel and her benefactor watch on, her impassively, it with glee - I can only see outlines, my eyes shut tight against the world, but I can see everything I need to -

And I can still hear _it_ through everything, crystal clear, cutting through the noise like it isn't there. It sighs. "Now, this is _too_ easy. And here I thought you were going to pose a challenge for me."

Gears grind on gears. Sparks fly, and thinks collide and break and twist as everything starts to fall apart around me. Darkness starts to close in. "I," it says, "am going to take everything about you that you hold dear and turn it to dust in your mind."

The world begins to split itself in half. The outlines of the two people watching me begin to blur into each other, and then, into the world around them. "It's not too late to say yes," it says.

"Never," I whisper, "never, never, never,"

"If you say so." The world itself begins to hate me. "But I find that people generally tend to see my way after a while. Once I strip away what I need to."

The noise is getting louder with every second, unbearably loud, ear-splitting loud - a metaphor I only really understand now - and still, it's voice never rises above a whisper. "Your family. Your friends. Your spirit. Your _name."_

"You can't," I repeat, "I won't let you, you _can't do this - "_

And I can feel the slick slime of _what it is_ reaching over me, looking for everything even marginally useful - it leaves taint and salt on everything it comes in contact with, and the parts of me that it touches wither and fall off in the process, segments of myself losing their grip and detaching - "I wouldn't be so sure, Marley."

_"My name is Safety,"_ I babble, _"my name is Safety, my name is Safety, my name is safety - "_

"Yes," it rumbles, "it is."

And then things go dark.


	31. Chapter 31

I am awake, and there is blood in my mouth.

I choke. I turn. I gag. I don't think it's mine; or at least, I don't think I'm bleeding. I spit and cough and it comes out murky and black, flecks of white inside; as a kid, I saw a movie at school where we got to see what a lifelong smoker's lungs look like, and this is always what I imagined oxygen must've become in those tumor-swollen sacs of air - heavy, almost syrupy, filled with _solids_ and more sweet than metallic.

I stare at it, waiting for it to disappear, but it doesn't.

I'm in my room. In the same clothes I remember wearing last night - or yesterday morning? - but clean, without any sign of what happened in the marshes, or that - that _place_. For a moment, I wonder if I dreamt everything, or - or if I'm already dead - but dismiss both thoughts just as quickly. The mound of viscera that's still on the floor in front of me is _real_ , and if I was dead, I don't think I'd have ended up right back here. ~~Unless this is hell.~~

So I drag myself, unsteadily, to my feet and look outside. The light's back to normal, I think. It's dusk out - seven p.m., I'd guess -and I can already see people beginning to filter back towards their homes, out on the streets. It must be getting close to curfew. Nothing seems _wrong_ out there, though - same amount of people as usual, doing the same things as usual; a few cars driving through town, heading up or down the coast, seemingly oblivious to everything that happened here before.

~~ Maybe I _was_ dreaming. ~~

_No,_ I think - or, not quite - it's more like someone else thought it for me. Multiple someones, a thousand - a hundred thousand someones, rising up in chorus, speaking in voices that I still don't know, but are becoming increasingly familiar. They overlap, individual words turning into indistinct syllabic mush, but the intent is clear. _This is real._

I swallow. _Okay. Voices in my head tell me it's real._ Not like I've never been here before.

By rote, I reach for the bottles on my windowsill and take my pills, though something tells me they aren't going to help that much right now.

I look around the empty room, eyes wandering over posters and books and tapes that all feel alien. I don't know if I've really, _fully_ grasped what's happened over the past few days. Maybe this is what accepting the existence of something like _that_ really feels like - just numbness and a cold, logical truth. Or maybe I'll never _really_ get it until it all comes crashing through in the form of a complete and total nervous breakdown in the middle of the street, maybe I'll be waking up screaming in my sleep for years to come -

If I'm alive, that is.

I pull out my phone. _Dead._ Of course. I consider charging it, but toss it aside - I don't have time to wait. I'll just have to hope that everyone else gets the same idea and heads out tonight.

I reach for the window, but I find that I can't pull it open. It's not locked, the latches are clear, there's nothing in the track keeping me from lifting it up - but it just won't _move_. Looks like I'm going to have to resort to plan B.

I shrug on a heavier sweatshirt and make for the door. It slides open easily. The hallway is dark, but I still move quietly, down the stairs and across the living room.

My mother is sitting in the kitchen.

"Marley," she says, voice tired.

I stop in my tracks. "Curfew hasn't started yet, I'm just going to - "

"You have until midnight."

I blink at her, not sure if I heard her correctly. "...Excuse me?"

She sighs, and rubs at her face with her hands. "That's all I was able to get you. They're coming back for an answer at midnight, and if they don't like what they hear - "

Hot anger and cold dread are at war in my veins. "What do you mean you _got_ me until midnight?"

She laughs bitterly. "I have a _little_ bargaining power. They're real big on rewarding loyalty - though they're obviously not as generous as I'd have hoped." She rests her hands on the table in front of her, and looks up at me with a sad, quiet smile. "I know better than to try and tell you what to do. But... just be safe, Marley."

I try to find words, but my mouth feels like it's full of cotton. I just manage to eke out an "Okay, Mom," before I turn and walk out the door.

 

I'm only a few steps outside of my front door when I hear another voice call out my name.

"Safety."

Claudette is leaning against the side of my house, arms crossed. She doesn't flinch or react when I run at her and slam her against the wall, my hands at her shoulders, her hands still neatly folded. "Give me one reason I shouldn't beat the shit out of you right now," I growl.

Her frown deepens slightly, but she doesn't move to shove me off. "I get that you're mad, but - "

_"Mad!?_ I'm fucking _furious._ You sold us out - "

"I did what I had to," she replied evenly. "And if you want to keep your head, you will too."

I don't respond at first, but after a moment I shove her away and back up a few steps. As she dusts herself off, I glare at her, offering only one word. "Why?"

"Because you were making a mistake. All of you." She looks at me, head tilted. "If you had just listened to me and let the police do their job - "

"We were _right!"_ I bark. "They _do_ have Petya, they're fucking _torturing_ them - "

"They're _punishing_ them. Petya broke the rules. You don't get to break the rules and then complain when you get caught."

"They _killed_ Alvarez! And more, _loads_ more - "

"I'm well aware," she says, voice icy.

I stare at her, face blank. "And you're _okay_ with that?"

She shakes her head. "Oh, no. It's absolutely despicable. But it's what has to be done to keep the town alive. So long as they stick to grabbing people that won't be missed - "

"That's _murder!"_

"I'm not done," she states. She glances at her nails, and sighs. "I'm sure that, given time - if I play my cards right - I'll be able to convince them to pursue less... _horrific_ solutions. But until then - given a choice between death, and a position where I can help the town and, eventually, gain the power I need to make things better?" She locks eyes with me. "The choice isn't that hard to make."

I stare at her. "You're a fucking _monster."_

She scoffs. "If I'm a monster, then so is just about everyone in town."

I shake my head. "You can't - there has to be another _way._ If you stood up to them - "

"Then they'd cut me down without another thought. Just like they will you. And even if I was successful - then what? Let's say you beat them. Let's say you beat them, destroy everything they own, rout them, get them out of town - then what? If they leave, they take the lifeblood of this town with them. You know as well as I do that, as lucky as we've been, the town's still _barely_ keeping its head above water - if the fish stop swimming, then we're _done."_

"Bullshit," I pant. "There's gotta be something else - "

_"There isn't,"_ she declares with finality, an edge of anger starting to creep into her tone. "This is how it's always been, and this is how it has to be. And you can either play the game like the rest of us, or you can make a stand for nothing and end up fuel." She slips hands, shaking slightly, into her pockets. "You're not an idiot, Safety. Make the right choice. And don't bother trying to leave," she adds, almost as an afterthought. "It won't work."

She turns on a heel and walks off back down the street before I even have a chance to reply.

I don't even know what I'd say, anyways.

 

I watch her leave. At first, I'm just waiting for her to get ahead of me, so I don't have to look at her as I walk down the hill - but the farther she goes and the more she stands there, the more reluctant I am to walk back down the hill at all.

Standing here, above the town, watching Chapel Bay start to close up for the night below me, I start to think that my brain might be a little wrong. Given everything that's happened over the past week or so ~~(how did everything get so wrong so fast?)~~ , I feel like I should've broken - I should've had that cinematic, cathartic moment where I fall to my knees, I look up at the sky and I scream the biggest, cheesiest _No!!!!_ that I can muster, or I should've just crumpled to the ground in an incoherent heap, unwilling or unable to confront the truth of the day, or I should've thought about killing myself  more, or cried my heart out with Corina, or, or, or -

Instead, all I can think is _what comes next?_ Where do I go from here? What is my next step? I need to keep one foot in front of the other, so let's figure out where the next footfall is going to land. I shouldn't be able to do that, but here I am - maybe that makes me strong. Maybe that makes me fucking stupid. Maybe I'm just terrified of slowing down long enough to really think about what I've seen and learned. Maybe this is just how it _works_.

I don't know.

But I guess it doesn't really matter in the long run - I've already wasted too much time thinking about it. Right now, this is where I am.

And I have work to do.


	32. Chapter 32

It strikes me, as I step off the hill and onto the side of the highway, that I have no idea if anyone else is okay right now.

Claudette didn't mention them. Neither did my mother. My phone is still dead, and although I'm reasonably certain that they'll all be heading out to the marsh to meet up too - I don't know what the fuck else we'd do - if they got hurt...

The nice thing about living in a small town, at least, is that it never takes too long to get anywhere. I decide to swing by houses on my way out of town and check if anyone's still there - just in case. I'm sure that me looking into everyone's bedroom windows isn't going to read too great with any bystanders, but what're they going to do - call the cops?

Kuwat's room is empty.

Rachel's house is empty.

...Petya's room is empty. And doesn't look like it's been occupied for in a while.

 

Hunter's isn't.

There's one light on in their house when I walk up the sidewalk, and although I've never been inside their house before, it only takes a quick stroll around the back to confirm that it's a bedroom. They're sitting on their bed, staring at the opposite wall listlessly, and they start when I knock on the window. They look at the door in confusion, and it isn't until I knock on it again and whisper-yell _"Hunter!"_ that they notice me at the window and run over.

They crack the window and bring their head level with the sill. "Safety? What are you doing here?"

"Are you okay?"

They seem taken aback by the question. "Me? Yeah, I'm - " They glance away. "I'm fine."

Literally anyone could tell that they're lying, but they don't look like they've been physically _injured_ , which is probably the best any of us can hope for. "Okay, good. Come on - I'm heading out to the marsh, and I think that's where everyone else is - "

"I'm... not going, Safe," they say. They keep their eyes averted.

I soften the tone of my voice. "Hunter," I say, "look, I know you're scared - fuck, I'm _terrified_ \- but we can't just hide away from this. We need to get together and figure out a plan - "

"That's not it," they interrupt for the second time. They don't elaborate.

I bite my lip. "...What is it?"

They turn away fully, their entire body perpendicular to mine. "...I've been talking to Claudette," they say.

The softness leaves my tone. "What do you _mean_ you've been talking to Claudette?"

Their voice shrinks with each syllable. "I just... I think she made some good points. And I don't think it's my place to interfere - "

"Are you fucking _kidding me!?"_ I explode.

"Well, what do you _want_ me to do, Safety!?" they burst out. "What, you want me to - to go and get myself _killed_ for some fucking _strangers?_ What do I care?"

"And what about _me,_ huh?" I ask. "What about when it's _my_ head on the chopping block? What about when it's _Rachel's?"_

"If you keep your fucking _head down_ ," they growl, "then you _won't._ That's what _I'm_ doing."

I scoff. "I don't fucking believe this. So, what, everyone that they've killed just - just _deserved_ it? Hell, _you_ were the one that kept Alvarez from bleeding out! You cleaned him up and handed him over to the EMTs - and now you're telling me that - that if you had _known_ , you'd have just done _nothing?_ Given him back to the cops?"

They don't respond.

"What about Petya?" I whisper. "Do _they_ deserve it?"

They just fold in on themselves further.

"So, you're - you're okay with them _killing_ people?"

"Of course not," they finally reply. "But sometimes you have to do the wrong thing for the right reasons. And if - "

_"That's not what this is."_

" - _If_ they're using strangers - people who fucked up, people who just get what's coming to them - then..." They sigh. "I don't see what that has to do with me."

I stare at them, speechless and numb. "Have you talked to Rachel about this?"

No response.

It takes me a few tries to get my mouth to make words. "Fine," I say quietly. "Just... fine." I move away from the window and start to leave. "Bye, Hunter."

They never reply.

 

My limbs feel heavy; my walk, listless. Claudette's always been a little... kind of... I don't know. _Cold_ doesn't feel right. But maybe a little too reserved, a little too willing to disengage from anything that required emotional investment. I was definitely surprised when she betrayed us, but it didn't seem implausible.

Hunter taking her side feels like the most impossible thing that's happened this entire week.

One more house to go.


	33. Chapter 33

Corina's house is empty.

The lights are on, though. The front door is open - unlocked and unlatched. I push the door open, slightly, and look in. No one's home - when no one responds to my calls, I go through the house, room by room, and find nothing. Some stuff's been knocked over. Corina's room is a disaster. But no Corina.

I turn my gaze back to the marsh. The light's almost gone, now - it's probably been a little less than an hour than I woke up, and we've almost crossed the threshold between dusk and night. I don't think the patrols are going to keep us from heading towards the Hollow tonight - Claudette told us just leaving wouldn't work, and I'm inclined to believe her, but I think that, given the circumstances, no one's going to give us too much shit for walking out towards the edges. All the same, I'd rather leave before things get too dark.

~~ The stench of rot and decay in the marsh doesn't quite give me the solace it usually does. ~~

I'm barely fifty feet into the marsh when I hear sobbing to my right.

I shine my light towards the source of the sound, but mostly as a formality. I recognize the tone - I'm pretty sure I know who it is.

"Corina?" I call out, as I start to walk towards the crying, and sure enough, there she is, kneeled over on a patch of dry land, crying in great, heaving sobs. "Hey hey hey," I murmur as I run over and crouch by her side. I place a hand on her back. "Come on, Corina, it's going to be fine - "

The moment she looks up, she throws her arms around me - nearly knocking me over in the process - and her sobs start anew, and it's all I can do I to hold her tight, let her cry into my shoulder, and murmur reassurances into her ear.

"It's going to be okay."

It takes time, but eventually, she manages to choke out words in between sobs. "What do - what do we _do_ , Safe?"

"I don't know," I reply, voice soft and low. "But we're going to figure something out. I promise you."

"I just - I don't know," she says. She's completely despondent - "I don't know _anything_ anymore, I can't - I can't deal with this stuff, I'm not strong like the rest of you guys - "

"Bullshit," I murmur. "If you think any of us are okay with this, you're not nearly as smart as I thought."

Something laugh-adjacent bubbles it's way up through the back of her throat, mirth completely stripped out. "All I want - all I want to do is just keep my head down. If I keep my head down, they'll leave me alone - "

I sigh deeply, letting the sound reverberate through my chest. "We can't do that, Corina. People are going to get hurt. And what's to stop them from going after us next?"

Corina pulls away, slightly, and looks up at me. "But - but all they do is go after - _bad_ people, like - drifters, like strangers - I'm not that, I'm part of the town, I'm normal - "

My brows furrow slightly. "Corina. If they run out of people _outside_ to go after, then they're just going to start going after people in town - "

"I'll be _fine!"_ Her voice takes on a manic edge as she continues. "If I - If I just play along, I'll be fine, right? I'm normal, there's nothing - nothing different about me - if I need to, I can pass for - "

_"Corina!"_

She stares at me with eyes, wide and afraid. In a voice closer to breaking than I've ever heard her, she whispers, "I don't want to die, Safety."

"I'm not going to _let_ you," I whisper -

And I wish I had nearly as much conviction as I can hear in my voice.

"Come on," I say, "let's get you up," and with that, I slowly, carefully get her back onto her feet, still with an arm wrapped around her trying to keep her upright. "People are waiting for us." _I hope._

Corina nods, barely, and with a last sniffle, begins stumbling along with me in something like a drunken three-legged race. I wait until I'm sure she's steady, before I continue in a quiet voice, "We can't not fight back, Corina."

She coughs, slightly. Her voice is slightly drier, now, if not still just as shaky. "I know. _I know._ I d-don't want to be part of this."

With my free hand, I point out at the horizon. "Here's what we're going to do. We're going to get out to the Hollow, we're going to meet up with Kuwat and Rachel, and we're going to figure out how to stay alive without selling our fucking souls." I pause. "We've got too much to live for to even think about dying right now."

She chokes out a slightly more honest laugh than before. "K-Kuwat would be pretty messed up if I went and d-died on him."

"Oh, yeah," I say. "You _know_ he would."

I throw a look at Corina out of the corner of my eye, but she's got her face turned away from me - I can't really read her expression. Part of me wants to push on that a little bit more, but a more sensible part of me is pretty sure that now's not the time.

"Wait," she says - "Just Kuwat and Rachel? What about Hunter?"

I bite my lip. "Hunter's not coming."

"She's not? Is - are they okay?"

"Yeah, yeah," I mutter. I throw another glance sideways at Corina, unsure what to say - the last thing I want to do right now is deliver bad news, but the fact of the matter is that Rachel already knows, which means - if they've met up - Kuwat already knows, and I'm going to have to tell her eventually. "She's - she's not going to stick her neck out with the rest of us. She's standing with Claudette and the... rest of the town."

"...Oh," she whispers. "Um. Fuck."

"Yeah," I breathe. "Fuck.


	34. Chapter 34

Showing up to the Hollow with Corina is essentially a repeat of how things went down last night. Kuwat and Rachel are already there, clustered around the water - at a safe ~~(respectful?)~~ distance - waiting for us to arrive; when we do, they step forward to meet us, and just about everyone besides Corina is briefly surprised when she runs forward and tackles Kuwat to the ground in a tear-soaked hug.

Rachel and I share a smile at the sight, but it doesn't last long. Everyone looks bad, but Rachel looks like she's the worst off of the group. Almost as soon as our eyes meet, she looks away, glancing by turns at the Kuwat and Corina (as Kuwat tries his best to get back to his feet without disengaging), the water, and a distant point at the edge of the woods that isn't really much of anything.

She looks distraught, but she's trying her best to hide it - her face is drawn tight, mouth is set hard, brows are firmly neutral in a way that's wholly unnatural - in an expression that I know I've worn plenty of times in the past. Her entire body language reads like it's stuck someone between tightly coiled and completely slack - like different limbs got different messages, and no one bothered to check what everyone else was doing.

Tentatively, I reach an arm out to her, but think better of it when her gaze snaps back to me.

"Hunter's not coming," she says quietly - too quiet for Kuwat and Corina to hear over their own hurried jabbering.

"I know." I look back over to her. "I'm sorry."

She snorts. "You sound like they're _dead."_

"Well, maybe that'd be easier." I wince almost as soon as I say it - "Sorry, that came out wrong. I meant - "

"I know, Safe." She sighs, eyes once again dancing beyond the dim edges of distant trees. "It's fine. We're done."

"Sorry," I repeat. I don't have anything to offer after that.

She nudges my shoulder. "Hey, at least they're single now, right? Now's your chance, hotshot."

I chuckle. "Yeah, not really interested anymore."

"Yeah." Rachel frowns at the water one last time, and then clears her throat and, with a clap, steps forward. Voice raised, she says, "Alright, lovebirds, back on your feet. We've got work to do."

Both Kuwat and Corina burst into stammered denials that Rachel watches with an impassive and highly skeptical eye, before she waves them off, shutting them both up in the process. "Enough. Seriously - we're all here. Everyone looks like they're more or less intact. We have - " she glances at her phone - "two and a half hours before our time's up - "

_"If_ they keep their word," I mutter.

" - if they keep their word, yeah. So?" She looks from face to face. "Ideas?"

Kuwat pipes up. "Is running out of the question?"

"Claudette made it pretty clear that wasn't an option," I say.

"Claudette spoke to you?" Rachel asks, surprise clear on her face.

I shift uncomfortably. "Yeah. She was waiting for me outside my house. She tried to talk me out of... whatever it is we do. Told me if I just followed along, then everything would be fine - " I sigh. "You know the drill. I'm sure everyone got the same kind of talk."

"Not from Claudette, but yeah," Kuwat said.

"My 'rents talked to me," Rachel said. Kuwat nods, and Corina follows suit.

"Well, don't I feel special." I look around. "Did... did you guys all talk to - that - that _thing_ , or was that just me too?"

Kuwat shudders. "I talked to it. The _benefactor._ I told it to fuck off."

"We got grabbed almost immediately after you went into the water," Rachel says. "I mean, we - we talked to it separately, but I think all of our conversations went pretty much the same way."

Corina laughs, but it feels hollow. "Well, I don't know. I probably sobbed more than you guys did."

Kuwat wraps an arm around her, and she leans against him in response. "So, no running, then."

Rachel frowns. "Well, I mean - do we _believe_ Claudette? I mean, couldn't she just be lying to us?"

"They could _all_ be lying," Corina mutters, "but given what we've seen so far, I'm inclined to believe them."

"But we don't know."

"I guess," she nods.

"So, _maybe_ no running, then," Kuwat says. "Great. What else?"

"What about getting word out?" I ask. "Tell people? Send emails? Make phone calls? I mean - everyone in town is either already part of this or wouldn't believe us, but if we went outside of town - "

"No one would believe us," Corina scoffs. _"I_ don't believe us."

Kuwat rubs at the bridge of his nose. "Do we just play along for _now?_ Wait until we have a chance to make a more _prepared_ move?"

Rachel shakes her head. "People will die while we wait. And if we _do_ play along, I doubt we're going to get the freedom to keeping meeting in secret anyways. I'm sure that _this_ \- the whole nighttime meeting in the marsh thing - would come to an end pretty fuckin' fast. We need to act _now."_

"So we just _break_ shit?" I look around. "Is that the best we can do?"

Corina looks up at the sky, overcast and dark. "Doesn't sound like anyone has any better ideas."

"Fine by me," Rachel spits. "It's what I've been saying we should do since day one." Her gaze settles on the water again. "Safe. Do you think you can bring other people through there? Back to that place?"

I follow her gaze, and I shake my head. "I don't know. Maybe - I won't know until I try. But even if I can, I'd have to think that they'd be expecting it. They're not going to let any of us sneak in through there again."

"Okay," Kuwat says, "the place - the other-side-of-the-water place is out. What else? We just attack some random building in town? That's not really going to..."

I let the rest of the discussion fade into the back of the mind, my eyes still fixed on the water. _I_ _wonder._ While the rest of the group keeps talking, I make my way over to the pool, and bend down to - once again - dip my fingers in the pool.

The rest of the group falls silent behind me as they watch me repeat the ritual. The water, once again, momentarily turns milky-white for a moment before fading to normal color and texture, and once again, the chorus of voices that first flooded into my head back then - which never really disappeared, as much as they just sort of subsided for a while - surges back to full volume, a confused deluge of information and stories that crashes around in my mind recklessly. And again, that feeling, that _tone_ fills my body, something that isn't quite a physical sensation, but feels more visceral anyways - it feels like... like the ocean, like anger, like -

"Like the tide," I whisper.

"What's that, Safe?"

I turn, and everyone else is staring at me intently. "I - I wonder," I say, "if... this - this water _thing_ \- doesn't just work in this pool."

Rachel leans forward. "You think that there's somewhere else that we can get to that place?"

I stand up, legs a little unsteady. "If I can get to the ocean - "

"Whoa, whoa," Corina says, voice deeply worried, "Safe, I'm not about to let you just walk into the fucking _ocean_ based on nothing. That's suicidal - "

"I know, I _know,"_ I mutter. "I just - I have a _feeling,_ okay? Not like just a feeling, like - everything in my body is telling me that that's where I need to go. That getting out of this means getting to the ocean." I pause. "That maybe this is what's been in the water this whole time." I lock eyes with Corina. "You felt it, too, right?"

Corina looks away and doesn't answer.

"Do we have any _better_ ideas?" I ask.

Rachel sighs. "The best we have right now is throw bricks at the police station."

"That's what I thought." I shrug. "Look, I get it if no one else is on board with this, but... I think it's what I have to do. And I'm going to do it."

Kuwat shares a look with Rachel and Corina, and shrugs. "Now's as good a time for stupid ideas as any."

Rachel laughs. "Fuck. Let's do it."

I turn towards the last member of our group. "Corina?"

Corina looks at me for a long, tired moment, and then sighs. "Just... please, Safety, be careful."

I swallow. "I will," I say, and for the second time that evening, I don't exactly lie, but I'm not putting as much faith in my words as I usually do.

Rachel glances back the way we came. "Okay. We should move, then. We need to get back to town, and get you on that beach, Safe."

I nod, and I follow Rachel as she and Kuwat move to leave. We're interrupted by Corina, though.

"Um - Kuwat?" she says. "Could you - stay behind, for a sec?" I shoot her a questioning glance. "Alone?"

"Oh. Um, sure," he says. "I'll - we'll catch up," he mutters to me and Rachel, we turn to leave as he goes back to stand with Corina.

We're a good fifty feet away when Rachel mumbles to me, out of the corner of her mouth, "If we get to the other side of this thing alive and they don't hook up, I'm going to fucking lose it."

Quietly, I snicker. "Yeah," I say - forced to pause for a moment, halfway through my thought - "She's - she's good for him, I think."

Rachel arches an eyebrow at me. "Safety Mackenna," she says, "is that _envy_ I hear in your voice?"

"No," I lie.

She snickers in turn. "Man, I don't know what it is with you and and falling for people that are already taken."

"No one's taken yet," I mutter.

She pauses, and gives me an appraising glance. "You know," she says, "if Kuwat's over the whole trans thing, there's probably room for you in there. You could - "

I channel as much threat and malice as I can muster into a low utterance of "You need to stop talking right now."

"I'm just saying," she laughs, "Your mom would be _horrified._ God, imagine Claudette's reaction - "

_"Rachel."_

"The gossip down at the diner would be _incredible - "_

_"RACHEL."_

She reaches over to tousle my hair, which she somehow manages to do, even though she's a couple inches shorter than I am. "Just saying," she says. "Something to think about.

"If we're still alive when the sun comes up."


	35. one last question

_James Alvarez stands in front of me, and he says in voices not his own:_

_You know everything we can teach you._

_You have all the knowledge that is ours to give._

 

_Now what are you going to do about it?_


	36. Chapter 36

Fifteen hundred feet.

That's about how far it stretches from the back side of town to the water, I'd guess. Give or take a bit. Chapel Bay is more wide than it is deep - at least, the _town_ is - and it's a pretty easy stroll from the edge of the marsh to the edge of the ocean.

It's a significantly harder run.

We're still milling around on the other side of the asphalt, trying to figure out the best plan of attack. We figure we can probably get pretty close to the water without getting anyone's attention - I think our neighbors and dutiful law enforcement officers would be understanding if they saw four kids out after dark, contemplating probable death - but if I'm right, and the path forward is in the water, then there's a good chance that the second we step foot on that beach, all hell is going to break loose.

If we had more time - if we had hours or days to plan, with whiteboards and supplies and strategy, instead of a few more minutes and nothing more than what we can pick up on the way - then maybe we could come up with something better than "walk until we have to run."

Oh well.

Rachel slips into the dark to run to her house, momentarily, to grab some hitting instruments - baseball bats, crowbars, whatever she can find - just in case - which leaves me with Kuwat and Corina.

"Look, guys," I say, voice low - "I don't want you to get any closer to this than you have to."

"Safety - "

"Shut up. Listen to me." I lean in. "Rachel is tough as shit, and apparently my mom has some _influence_ , so I think we'll be okay if - _when_ things go really bad. But - and I'm sorry - you guys are fucking weak."

No one really agrees with me, but no one voices their disagreement, either.

"What I need you guys to do is to raise some hell - move fast, and be loud. Draw their attention as best as you can, and then get the fuck out of there a-s-a-p."

"You want us to be distractions," Corina says, voice flat.

"Yeah. And maybe take a few swigs from that flask I know you're still carrying, so if you get caught, you look less like distractions, and more like emotionally troubled delinquents."

Wordlessly, Corina fishes out a small flask and passes it to Kuwat. "It'll be the acting challenge of my career," he mutters, before taking a swig and gagging almost instantly.

"Keep an eye on each other, okay?" I glance between them. "Let's make sure we all get out of this in one piece."

They nod, and fall silent, staring alternately at the distant water, or down the road, where Rachel went.

The normalcy of this situation - not the whole thing, just this, right here - hits me like a fucking brick. After last night, I would've thought the entire world would be brimming with tension, stormclouds on the horizon, monsters and horrors roaming the streets - but right now, it feels just like a million other nights before it. It's cold, and a little windy, but nothing special. It's quiet, but all the mechanical and electrical hums and whines of the houses around us sound the same. It's overcast, but not storming - just kind of cloudy. I can still see some stars poking through the cover overhead. The buildings of the town aren't suddenly alive, the populace isn't lumbering out of their doors to chase us down, the streets don't run with blood - if it wasn't for what we had seen the night prior, I'd never have known that Chapel Bay was any different from the hundreds of other little towns that dot the coast.

I think that's worse, actually.

Rachel comes walking - not really sprinting, but moving _fast_ \- out of the dark, an assortment of metal and wood stick-shaped things in her hands. "I come bearing gifts."

Everyone crowds around and comes away with something heavy-ish in their hand - a crowbar in mine - and with that, we're ready. Kuwat checks his phone. "Fifteen minutes 'til midnight."

Corina hefts her weapon of choice - a baseball bat, I guess - over a shoulder. "Alright. We'll get to work."

"Godspeed," I whisper.

She gives me a tight - honest, but still strained - smile, and with a last nod to Rachel, she and Kuwat turn and run down the street to make a mess. I turn to Rachel. "Ready?"

"As I'll ever be."

The walk to the beach is tense, to say the least. I don't think either of us are particularly inclined to talk, so all there is for us is keeping our pace steady, and trying not to look too suspicious out after curfew with weapons in hand. Distantly, I can hear intermittent clangs and shattering class - _distractions_ , I guess - but except for the one time we have to pull back into an alleyway to let a patrol pass by (normal, again - or at least as normal as they ever are), we don't see anyone else on our walk.

The streets are quiet, as they are ever night, but it feels more foreboding now than it usually does. I walked back to town ready to fight something - or at least, outrun it - but for the moment, we're being left alone. Whether that's on purpose or just coincidence, I don't really know.

We manage to keep our pace normal all the way up to the main drag. With a step off of the sidewalk, and onto the highway, my steps quicken, and Rachel's shortly follow. No motion - on the beach, or in my peripheral vision. We hit the beach adjacent sidewalk, and as soon as our feet hit sand, we gun it -

And that's when the town comes alive.

The second the first grains of sand kick up behind me, a _call_ goes up throughout the city. A low, rumbling, _braying_ noise, vaguely animalistic, vaguely brass-like, that quickly ascends into a screech that echoes throughout the empty streets and back alleys, resonating and reverberating through the structures - in town, and on the hill.

I can't tell where it's coming from, and I don't dare turn my head around; all that matters right now is making it to the water. I move my legs faster and harder than they've ever moved before, and my lungs are already burning by the time I'm halfway to the water. Rachel's keeping pace next to me - outstripping me, actually, but she keeps shooting looks back behind her to make sure I'm still close. She turns back, now, and her eyes widen -

I glance backwards just in time to hear the _THUD_ and see the spray of sand - and when it falls, standing in the middle of it, is one of the patrols, blue lights spasming wildly, and leash only held by what looks like a hand, ripped off of some unsuspecting wrangler. It's joints creak and grind, but before long, it's moving again, running after us and moving ten times faster the we are.

But we're close - _so close_ \- so near the edge that the sand is still heavy with the recent tide, still dark and solid underneath our feet, but I don't know who's going to make it there first. The sand bends and folds with each step we take, and soon, we're basically _in_ the water -

And then the thudding of the footsteps behind us ends with an even louder _bang_ , and Rachel turns, grabs me by the arm, and throws me forward - the last five, six, seven feet -

I see, as I land, Rachel dive forward and still get clipped by the patrol as it comes crashing down, and her leg twists -

I land on my knees in the water, and the ocean goes white.

The sound cuts out of the world in almost the same moment; braying and growling replaced with a single, solitary tone, quiet, low, and motionless. The water follows suit - tides disappear, and the subtle flickering across the ocean of waves dipping in and out of what little moonlight there is vanishes - in a ring of change, emanating out from where I hit the water, things fall completely and utterly still. What's in front of me doesn't look so much like the ocean as it does an expanse of ice, and it's only by the sensation around my legs that I know it's still liquid.

I turn, and - with a patrol still standing directly over her, motionless but for a constant trembling (?) - Rachel is lying on the ground, staring forward, dazed and awestruck. She doesn't look good. I yell out _"Rachel!"_ and she barely moves her head in response.

"I'm fine," she says, although she's only feet away, I have to strain to hear her. "Go on without me - "

"Like hell," I snarl. I don't know what's going to happen once I go into the water, but if there's a chance that the thing standing over her is going to come to life, I need to get her as far away from it as I can. I stretch towards her, careful to leave my lower body still in the water. "Come on," I say, "get over here."

Just as she nods, and starts to wriggle across the sand towards me - dragging herself forward with her hands. There's a _boom._ Big, and _close_ ; it makes me think, momentarily, of something trying to get out from under ice -

And then the Thing In The Water bursts up through the ocean, shattering it like glass in the process -

A million teeth and no eyes, an entire apparatus of cleanly polished bone, stripped clean of anything organic by months - years - centuries? - in the ocean, waiting, watching -

_Breaching_ out of the water, corkscrewing in midair and already yawning wide through the shards of the Ocean that whisper around it like airborne diamonds, maw open and intent clear -

(It doesn't have eyes, but it's looking at me just the same - )

Suddenly - in a moment that I'll be replaying in my mind for years to come, trying to make sense of it - the particulates around it change course. Fragments of ersatz water suddenly look liquid again, and gravitate towards another as yet more surges up from the surface to join it; before I even know what's happening, the Ocean has _leapt up_ and, with a maw of it's own, grabbed the thing in ropes of not-quite-water and constricted, dragged it back down, pulled _tight_ -

 

And then it's gone. Like it was never even there.

I still stare out at the water, even after it's relaxed back to the same uniform, unnatural stillness. Seconds pass as I wait for it to come back, to leap out at me, for it to surge back onto the beach and come after me, or Rachel, or anyone else - but there's nothing there. Not anymore.

"Rachel?" I whisper. I hear a small grunt of acknowledgement from just behind me. I turn, and still keeping my feet in the water, do what I can to pull her to her feet as I get to mine. She winces - sharp intake of breath - when she tries to take a step with her left leg. Sprained, or broken. Maybe bleeding (it's too dark to tell).

Still. I get under her as best as I can, and try to basically drag her forward, keeping her off of her bad leg. Wordlessly, I start to move forward, into the water, and step by step, the world disappears.


	37. Chapter 37

Again:

I am in an expanse of metal and void.

I don't really know _quite_ what happened in between my head dipping below the water and me standing here.

And it is _silent -_

Save for Rachel's labored breathing.

Gently, I lower her to the ground, and she finds a spot leaning back against a rusted, worn plate of metal that looks like it's seen better days. She lets out a sigh of relief as she sits down, and I take a moment to try and get a look at her leg. It's dark here - there's still the omnipresent red glow of emergency lights, but they're dimmer here than they were in the other Place. Even with less light, though, it's easy to see that Rachel's leg isn't good. Almost definitely broken, and bleeding from somewhere. Not badly - but blood is blood.

"Are you going to be able to walk?" I ask.

She laughs weakly. "Probably not," she says, voice barely a croak. "I think you're own your own from here, Safe."

I shake my head. "I'm not going to leave you. I'll carry you if - "

"Save it, Safety." She shrugs. "I'll be fine. Besides, if there's something in here that'll kill me, it'll kill _both_ of us if you're busy trying to keep me moving." With a satisfied huff, she settles back against the panel, and says, "Go ahead. Do what you have to do. Let me grab a little rest, and when you're done, we can go to a hospital or something and get me fixed up."

I bite my lip. "You can't fall asleep. If you're in shock - "

"Oh, believe me, Safe, I'm not in shock." Her face contorts. "I can feel this with _excruciating_ clarity."

I glance around the... room, I guess, but it doesn't look like there's any way of getting around this. "Fine," I sigh. "Just... be careful. If you get in trouble, I don't know, yell for me or something, and I'll try and get back to you."

_"Okay, mom."_

I grab her shoulder as I stand up, and with a last glance towards her, I turn a corner and start walking.

I don't have a clear idea of where I'm headed or what I'll find there - no more than the last time I ended up in a place like this - but my... intuition, I guess, feels a little stronger than it did last time. I'm still taking corners at random, but it seems like a more guided randomness than before. Something tells me that I'm taking the right turns and following the right machinery, even if it's not deliberate.

This place isn't the same as the last one was, though. The lights are different, of course - some of them are burnt out, some of them are on their way, sitting on that edge of extra brightness that comes right before they fade entirely; some of them are even different colors - a faded green, the occasional white lights, even a couple of blues off in the distance.

But what I notice even more than that is the _wear_ here. The last place I was in was by no means _new_ , but it was _sterling_ compared to this. The cogs and pistons and panels and motors around me don't just look worn, they look nearly unrecognizable underneath the grime and the rust. There's nothing here that doesn't look oxidized to hell and back; more than that, it all looks _brittle._ Like it wouldn't take more than a few swings with something hard to shatter it all to pieces. (The crowbar, still in my hand, is tempting, but the last thing I want is to attract attention to myself.)

Things only get worse as I walk. Any glyphs or letters like the ones I saw before are absent, here, or so buried under decay and layers of more mark-making that they're illegible. It becomes harder and harder to tell what I'm looking at - gears and plates and chains all start to blend and melt together ~~(maybe literally)~~ until what I'm faced with is just _metal_ , no distinction between disparate parts.

The sense of _correctness_ that's absent from the world continues to guide my steps, though. Or, no - it's not that there's some part of me that knows where I'm going, it feels more like this _place_ is guiding me. Like there's something, off in the labyrinth, that's drawing me closer and closer to it.

I take a turn, and the walls disappear.

What stretches before me is a pathway into the darkness. On either side, nothing is visible beyond faint hints at structure above and below, and distantly - far, far too distant for comfort - the slow, patient pulsing of those same lights. The world, for all intents and purposes, looks like it ends on each side of the walkway - a strip of metal plates, just like the ones that I've been walking on the entire time - that leads away from where I am, and out towards _something_ , unseen and unknown.

I am also absolutely, one-hundred percent sure that this is where I'm supposed to go.

With my first step out onto the walkway, I'm almost _ready_ for the tiles to fall out underneath me, for them to crumble with any weight and send me tumbling down into the (infinite, for all I know) murk below. But they hold firm. I don't know _how_ they hold firm, or what's keeping them up, but at the moment, I'm not about to start second-guessing my survival. A second step follows the first, then a third, and before long, I'm keeping the same pace that I was before.

As I walk, something else changes, too. It's not _silent_ here anymore. The farther I walk, the more a sound starts to fade in - something at the end of the path - a quiet, rhythmic _plink_ noise. Every couple of seconds. Sometimes it speeds up, and sometimes it slows down, but mostly it just continues at the same steady rate. _Plink. Plink. Plink._

_Plink._

The end of the walkway comes out of the darkness so suddenly that I almost jump off in surprised.

It's a door.

Attached to walls, and, maybe, a floor, though I can't see it; the walls continue as far as the meager lights by the door illuminate, the same brittle metal as everything else, here worn to an almost wafer-thin degree - a solid punch would probably go through them.

But luckily for me, I don't have to put that theory to the test, because the door _opens._

I step into a small, rectangular room - only twelve or so feet wide, and maybe double that to the side opposite the door I just walked through. It is empty, save for two things:

A pit that dominates the distant half of the room, the bottom of which is almost entirely within shadow, but is still lit enough that I can see the faint motion and gleam of machinery at its base, and that gives off a sense of magnetism so strong that I _instantly_ know, as soon as I approach the edge, that _this_ is the heart of everything - and -

On the opposite wall, just above the pit, a small electronic screen with a number on it.

And everything I hear that _plink_ , the number changes.

 

0000000000000010000110010010011011010110010001110101101100101100

 

_Plink._

 

0000000000000010000110010010011011010110010001110101101100101101

 

_Plink._

 

0000000000000010000110010010011011010110010001110101101100101110

 

_Plink._

 

0000000000000010000110010010011011010110010001110101101100101111

 

I should maybe keep my voice down, but I can't help saying _something_. "It's... counting?"

_"yes."_

I whirl around and find myself face to face with -

 

Well -

 

If the thing I saw last night was something indescribable because it was constantly in flux, constantly changing, in perpetual motion, this is indescribable because it _isn't_. Looking at it feels like my vision has _slowed;_ like any rays that bounce off of or pass through it are reduced to a speed slow enough that light starts to lose meaning. The _thing_ , whatever it is, makes my mind feel like it's given up - colors begin to run together, shadows start to bend, lines become curves and curves become lines - there are hints of appendages made to rend and tear, but they're all rendered visual noise by the actuality of what it _is_.

It takes all the will I have just to keep my eyes open, and anything I have left goes into raising my crowbar and getting ready to fight. But as my head starts to acclimate, it becomes clear that whatever this is, it doesn't seem like it's interested in moving first. In fact, it hasn't moved since I walked in - though I didn't see it _then_ , so I don't know if it followed me in or was here the whole time. Slowly, I lower my hand, but I keep my grip tight.

"Alright," I say, my voice even. "What does it do?"

When it speaks, everything it does to my sight begins to spread to my ears - like hearing a car speed away from you, but it never gets quieter - just lower, and slower.

_"it goes up."_

"Okay, but - eurgh - " I have to grab at my head and shut my eyes, just to give myself a moment's respite. (It gets a little easier the longer I'm in here, but - ) "Why?"

_"unimportant."_

"That's not an answer," I start, ready for a fight again -

_"unimportant. this is the end of the line for you,"_ it continues to drone in that infuriating monotone (monochromatic tone?). _"it is surprising that you are here at all."_

I try to respond, but all I find in my throat is bile, trying to make it's way out -

_"what do you intend to do,"_ it... asks, but not really.

As soon as I'm sure I can speak without spraying vomit everywhere, I point down to the machinery in the pit and heft my crowbar. "I'm going to break that, I guess." I try to smile. It doesn't really work.

_"pointless. you will fail."_

"If you won't tell me what it is - "

_"it is nothing."_ It pauses ~~(hesitates)~~. _"a spare part. a redundancy."_

_"Bullshit."_ I wipe at my nose. It's bleeding. "Whatever it is, it's fucking _important_ , and that makes it worth breaking."

_"you are wrong. the structure is not so easily broken. it can withstand the destruction of an unneeded part - "_

I laugh. "You've got to be fucking kidding me. _Look_ at this shit!" I gesture to the room around us. "This entire place is fucking falling apart. I'll bet - " I pause, a small realization running through my mind. Quieter, I continue, "This place _is_ falling apart. Even without me, you've got, what - a few years? Maybe a decade before the entire thing falls to pieces?"

_"an eternity."_

"No," I say, "you're living on borrowed time as it is. And I bet that as soon as I break that thing, _all_ of this is going to come down around our heads."

_"you are wrong."_ I turn back towards the pit and walk to the edge. _"you are WRONG,"_ it bellows, hints of emotion starting to creep into its voice for the first time since I walked in here.

I turn back to it, one foot on the edge. "Bullshit," I whisper.

_"if you move, you will die,"_ it says. _"i will kill you before you make it to the bottom."_

I eye it - as much as it hurts to do so. It doesn't look fast - it doesn't _move_ fast - but I need to consider that it might not be lying -

_"it is useless to even try. even if you destroy this, there are others."_

For a moment, my hearing dips out. Blood drips to the floor. "O- _others?"_

_"of course. do you think we are so likely to place all of our faith in your pathetic little town."_ It moves forward, then, and in a split second, it closes half of the distance to me. _"any victories here are meaningless. if you surrender now, i will be sure to give you a quick death. if you jump, i will not be so kind."_

 

_Plink._

 

I look between the thing, the edge, and the pit.

 

_Plink._

 

Trying to calculate distances, figure out my odds, try and find out my best chance of survival -

 

_Plink._

 

Trying to find another way out of this -

 

_"there is nothing you can do."_

 

 

 

_Plink._

 

 

 

 

 

_Plink._

 

 

 

 

 

_Plink._

 

 

 

 

 

I look at the distant door one last time, and I take a deep breath.

"I can still do _this,"_ I whisper -

 

And I turn -

 

 

And I _jump -_


	38. Chapter 38

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_I know three things right now:_

 

_My name is Safety._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_I am twenty-two years old._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_The water is starting to clear._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	39. reeds drifting in the wash

dark water - it's all dark water;  
the moon's not out,  
the beach is dark and quiet -  
no vhs blue,  
no faux-dusk supersaturated night skies - 

it's black, mostly, and lone fragments of light;  
pink orange and piss yellow streetlights,  
down by the sand,  
the stores, the arcades, the tourist traps,  
and out here at the marsh, there's just  
dots on the periphery -  
point flickering on the horizon -  
power station?, cell tower?,  
who knows and who cares -  
they all signal the same pattern, on, off, on off;  
one, off, two, off, three, four, off;  
signaling signing singing -

broadcasting mixed messages into the cool air,  
word and song pressed  
into the salt and the dark,  
ground into the muck,  
mud seeping into every syllable,  
every phoneme,  
every little snippet of whitespace -

it stinks out here.

(which you know on a very basic level;  
which you know, because  
 _everybody_  
says so,  
it's the first thing they mention  
when they step out of their cars  
and into the oh-so-pungent ocean air)

it stinks out here, but now,  
 _now_ you can smell it,  
punching through a lifetime of  
resistance and adaptation and it _hits you_ -

right when you least expect it -

doubled over and gagging at the side of the road,  
the smell of all that  
(death and rebirth)  
(home sweet salt home)  
space, space, space;  
farther than you can see or smell or hear;  
nothing at all in between your little patch of dirt  
and the lights  
out by the border

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading.


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